Jonas Maksvytis

In the spring of 1989, the planting of the oak tree grove of Lithuanian national revival was started in the birthplace of Jonas Basanavičius in the village of Ožkabaliai. Thousands of people from all over Lithuania came to the planting, carrying seedlings and Lithuania's tricolours.

An insecure millennial woman pursues her dream whilst learning how to adult. While being preoccupied with life tasks at hand she can barely handle and also severe depression, main character of this film Marta (30) keeps dreaming about making films, drawn to the healing power of storytelling, but not having the courage to act these dreams out; sometimes she is too scared to even pick up the phone. Marta’s life seems to sway both in comic and tragic directions: it’s sometimes a mix of ultimate freedom, sex, drugs, friendship, laughter, alcohol, lots of alcohol, music, honesty and love, and sometimes the reality Marta avoids to face becomes so brutal she can’t take it anymore. Through the course of the film Marta learns there is an unavoidable question that at some point becomes inevitable for almost every filmmaker: if you really want to direct films, can you first direct yourself out of depression?

Adomas encounters a group of hooligans tearing through streets in a car. Drawn into a violent tournament with an unusual trophy at stake, Adomas finds his morals shifting.

The late Georgian writer, filmmaker and university professor, Zaza Khalvashi, delivers a quirky yet genuine tale of mundanity in this posthumously produced feature. Drawing Lots is a vignette of a seaside community where an apartment block and courtyard serve as an amphitheatre for the mysterious power dynamics that play out in the residents’ intertwined lives.

Entre el 29 y el 30 de septiembre de 1941, el Sonderkommando 4a del Einsatzgruppe C, con la ayuda de dos batallones del Regimiento de la Policía del Sur y de la Policía Auxiliar Ucraniana, y sin que la población local opusiera ningún tipo de resistencia, fusiló a 33.771 judíos en el barranco de Babi Yar, al noroeste de Kiev. La película reconstruye el contexto histórico de esta tragedia con imágenes de archivo que documentan la ocupación alemana de Ucrania y la década posterior.

Mother takes her eight-year-old daughter Antonia to a children’s creativity camp. Antonia is not happy about having to spend time under close adult supervision. On their way, she spots a sign saying ”The Robots Have Escaped!” The sign unleashes Antonia’s imagination and grows into a fantasy of how exciting her stay in the camp might turn out to be. Of course, Antonia’s and the robots’ paths intersect at the camp, where they intend to steal children’s dreams during their afternoon nap to convert them into ingenious commercials. Thriller-like events unfold. Thanks to Antonia’s inquisitive and rebellious nature and with her best friend and favourite toy Yeti by her side, the robots’ intention is averted.

Single mother Anna and her four children live in the front-line war zone of Donbas, Ukraine. While the outside world is made up of bombings and chaos, the family is managing to keep their home a safe haven, full of life and full of light. Every member of the family has a passion for cinema, motivating them to shoot a film inspired by their own life during a time of war. The creative process raises the question of what kind of power the magical world of cinema could have during times of disaster. How to picture war through fiction? For Anna and the children, transforming trauma into a work of art is the ultimate way to stay human.

Anna Khamasi Omutsani is a widow. One day, her husband Peter Dianga goes to work and doesn’t return home. Anna’s attempts to contact him on the phone are fruitless. After a restless night, the neighbour girl Abigael knocks on the window and reports that she had seen Peter lying in the stream under the bridge. Men from the community pull his body out. The police pronounce him dead, but do not investigate the circumstances of his death. The Council of Elders, convened under the shade of a mango tree, deals with the existential affairs of the community. The Council decides Peter Dianga’s death was an accident, so he is buried properly, to the right of the door of the house. Anna’s greatest dream is to educate her children – the source of Anna’s quiet yet proud strength.

Año 1970. La Guardia Costera de los EE. UU. se dispone a encontrarse con un barco soviético anclado frente a las costas Norteamericanas. Se ha programado una conferencia de un día entre las dos naciones para discutir los derechos de pesca en el Océano Atlántico. Mientras las conversaciones están en pleno apogeo, el marinero lituano Simas Kudirka salta al agua helada del Atlántico y nada hasta el barco estadounidense en un frenético intento de conseguir la libertad. Para su desgracia y ante el clamor de numerosos medios de comunicación mundiales, los estadounidenses lo devuelven a los soviéticos y Simas es juzgado por traición. El evento desencadena una serie de protestas en todo EE. UU. pidiendo su libertad. Toda esperanza parece perdida, hasta que aparece nueva información sobre Simas.

Human beings are the kings of all animals, at least if you ask us humans. Our vanity is given something to mirror itself in, but does not escape without a scratch or two in this documentary, which observes a taxidermist, a deer farmer and a museum curator at work. Three jobs that have one thing in common: turning animals into aesthetic objects, alive as well as dead. When the work is done properly, it is impossible to tell the difference. Dead pets are mummified. At the zoological museum, the animals' glassy eyes stare back at us from the showcases. Even a plastic alligator has its natural place in the human master plan.

Radio Free Europe, BBC, and Voice of America can only rarely get through the Iron Curtain and Soviet mufflers to Lithuania, a country torn by a war between the local resistance movement and the Soviet regime that is forced onto Lithuanian people by bayonets of the Russian army. Everybody who tries to resist the Soviet rule is either terrorized or executed or exiled to Siberia. He is one of the local high-school students who witness the local armed resistance to the Soviet occupation and ultimately decide to join it by taking a gun into their hands. He collects documents and all possible kinds of evidence that prove daunting crimes of the Kremlin. He soon becomes a legend among his peers. To girls, he is John Wayne the Hollywood Icon. Guys see him as an insurmountable obstacle and an invincible rival in matters of love.

Radio Free Europe, BBC, and Voice of America can only rarely get through the Iron Curtain and Soviet mufflers to Lithuania, a country torn by a war between the local resistance movement and the Soviet regime that is forced onto Lithuanian people by bayonets of the Russian army. Everybody who tries to resist the Soviet rule is either terrorized or executed or exiled to Siberia. He is one of the local high-school students who witness the local armed resistance to the Soviet occupation and ultimately decide to join it by taking a gun into their hands. He collects documents and all possible kinds of evidence that prove daunting crimes of the Kremlin. He soon becomes a legend among his peers. To girls, he is John Wayne the Hollywood Icon. Guys see him as an insurmountable obstacle and an invincible rival in matters of love.

The film consists of three chapters. The Manslayer takes place more than a hundred years ago. The leading character Maara is a young bride who is about to start her life in her new family. The Virgin, set in the spring of 1949, tells the story of a young woman called Elina, who has been deported from Ingria into Estonia during the previous war. The Shadow moves in the present, on the border of real life and fantasy. The main character, Luna Lee, has decided to flee from home. Is there anything besides emptiness somewhere? The film is led by the singularity of the leading character - Maara, Elina and Luna Lee are all played by the same actress.

A true story about an 11-year-old girl named Maria who makes her way back home to Lithuania from Siberia.

Monika, a middle-aged wealthy woman, goes through a marriage crisis with her younger husband Linas. A car accident leads Monika to meeting three young girls, Kristina, Egle and Gitana, who happen to be ex-prostitutes extradited from Germany. The lady and the girls settle down in a country mansion, to form a relationship that will change their lives forever

After recovering from an overseas mission, Krists Lapins moves into a quiet neighbourhood in Riga. His hopes for a new, peaceful life are disrupted when an unexpected visitor arrives one night. Krists soon finds himself in a swirl of events involving a mysterious blonde, a wannabe private detective, a bankrupt millionaire, and a rigorous cop. In this witty portrayal of modern Latvian society the absurd meets the comic and nothing is what it seems.

The film is based on the novel by Romualdas Granauskas, winner of the Lithuanian National Cultural and Arts Award, and is the chronicle of a young man’s shifting relationships as he adjusts rather dramatically to the unfamiliarity of freedom. The film will be shown in Lithuanian with English subtitles. Duburys won the Silver Crane Award in Lithuania. It has been selected as Lithuania’s entry for this year’s Oscar nomination in the foreign language film category. Duburys was entered in the Montreal World Film Festival, Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival and has been invited to Cairo International Film Festival and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

A nearly-suicidal, young woman visits a psychotherapist. She is in love with a priest, and the diagnosis of her husband's mental illness leaves no hope. The psychotherapist, in her attempts to resolve the amassed difficulties, seemingly begins to duplicate the life stages and behavioral patterns of her patient. A script for this film is based on motifs from the best-seller, scandalous novel, Witch and Rain, by female author, Jurga Ivanauskaite. By choosing a priest as the main role for a love story, the author broke an existing societal taboo. Faith, Love and Hope form the trilogy by the authors of this screenplay. Love stands as the grandest of the three.

Esta película, nos narra la historia de un artista y pensador que fue un preso permanente de los regimenes soviético y nazi. El protagonista principal, el Profesor, tiene una personalidad excepcional, vive con sus propias reglas y principios morales, pero será encarcelado en un campo de concentración alemán donde sufrirá el drama de ser un condenado. La ironía le ayudara a sobrevivir en esta situación de circunstancias extremadamente crueles. En el campo de concentración, el Profesor, escribirá unas memorias con unos contenidos que los soviéticos nunca aceptarán. La supuesta libertad soviética llegará a ser igual o peor que el campo de concentración alemán..

Portrait of Augustinas Baltrušaitis, film and theatre director, as well as actor, who fell into obscurity and has now been relegated to the margins of society, as a result of specific political circumstances. Countdown is a film about the limits of memory, the effects of the implacable passage of time, and a hope that surpasses time.

The film portrays Lukša's attempts, in trips to western Europe, to gain support for the armed anti-Soviet resistance (known as the Forest Brothers), whose fortunes in a guerrilla war against Soviet authorities were waning, largely due to widespread infiltration and harsh crackdowns by the NKVD.