Latvian director Elizabete Gricmane introduces the composer and musician Juris Kulakovs at the beginning of the film as a man who made history. The man whose music inspired the generation that took part in the restoration of Latvia's independence, and at the same time gave them the opportunity to be born in the already free country

In November, the Lithuanian Film Centre and the National Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture will organise a retrospective of the works of Audrius Stonys, one of the most prominent Lithuanian documentary filmmakers, in Paris. 7-18 November, documentary film lovers will have the unique opportunity to see a major retrospective of the director's films for the first time in France. The programme includes twenty of Stonys' films covering the period from 1989 to 2018. 

Sometimes, when you are overwhelmed by despair that no one around you can hear what is being said, you need to raise your tone, speak loudly, in choppy tones, in manifestoes, patiently and at length, like with small children.

„Scanoramos“ trumpametražių filmų konkurse „Europos blyksniai“ dalyvauja keturi pradedančiųjų Lietuvos kūrėjų darbai. Vienas jų – jaunosios režisierės Silvijos Kuodytės filmas „Aš tave nužudysiu“ (2022). Tarptautiniame Bodeno kino festivalyje geriausiu LGBT filmu pripažintas kūrinys pasakoja apie merginą vardu Saulė, kuri bijo sugrįžti namo. Režisūros magistro laipsnio siekianti Silvija Kuodytė interviu pasakoja apie debiutinio filmo užuomazgas ir kertinius kūrinio emocinius momentus, taip pat prabyla apie autentiško jaunimo bendravimo trūkumą lietuviškame kine.

One more film could be made about the journey of Hanna Gladka, the heroine of the Ukrainian-Lithuanian documentary "The Earth Is Blue as an Orange", and her five children and Hanna's sister Olga's son, Danil, from war-torn Ukraine to Lithuania. 

It is possible to enter the time long gone. This is the impression you get when you watch Sergei Loznitsa's film “Mr. Landsbergis” made with Lithuanian filmmakers and awarded the main prize at the IDFA International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam. 

All through the film I was thinking, what is my relationship with the military? It’s like: I'm a pacifist, and anything to do with militarism, all kinds of weapons, military uniforms, bare shaved heads and the drill of bodies makes me, to put it mildly, dispiriting, but what would I do if – spit three times – I suddenly had to pick up a gun and go and defend my country, which, I assure you, I love dearly, and if I do, it would take more than just words to prove it; what I would do if I had to, it is even uneasy to think about it, point a gun at someone, shoot. 

Don't throw away what you've broken, you'll fix it, says the folklore of life. And if this idea seems quite welcome when it comes to material possessions, in relationships this approach does not necessarily bode well. 

It is hardly fair to second the film's trailer, which claims that the new documentary "Back from New York" is the story of "two unique and acclaimed artists". Rather, it is a reverence for the teacher Jonas Mekas.

“Gregorian chant has no structure, music just floats,” says one of the interlocutors in Jokūbas Vilius Tūras’ latest film ‘Sacred Time’. The same cannot be said of the documentary film itself, which, like that choral, floats also, but has a very clear structure – unpretentious (which doesn’t necessarily mean bad), articulated, concrete. 

The premiere of the film “Roman’s Childhood” by Linas Mikuta, one of the most interesting Lithuanian documentary filmmakers of the last decade, took place at the European Film Forum “Scanorama”. 

Until recently, Lithuanian cinema was criticized for avoiding to tell the stories of ordinary people and for fleeing into relative space and time. However, it took a new generation of filmmakers for stories to appear on the screens over the last few years that you would not call indifferent to the realities of the present. 

The manifestation of indecision – this is how I would like to describe the impression left after the premiere of the film “Nova Lituania” directed by Karolis Kaupinis, which opened Lithuanian cinemas after the lockdown. 

“Spoon” (Latvia, Norway, Lithuania) is a treatise on the role of disposable items in modern culture and economy. There is a paradoxically high amount of investment in the production of insignificant items which are used only once – for someone in a park to eat from their lunch box, a single plastic spoon goes through a chain of actions of incredible length and complexity that spans half the globe.