“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. 

Already in her debut film “Deminas: Two Towers” (2015), Akvilė Gelažiūtė showed that she is interested in situations and characters that are unusual for Lithuanian documentary cinema, and her humour and attention to “light” topics can probably only be related to Giedrė Beinoriūtė (by the way, one of the characters of “Europe Unseen” also starred in Beinoriūtė’s “The Specialist” (2012)).

It is not true that misanthropists do not like people. When you see the sculptor Nijolė Šivickas, mother of Antanas Mockus, on screen, you realize that misanthropists avoid people because they care more about who they interact with and who they touch in this world.

In Lithuanian narrative films there increasing attempt to reconstruct its recent past and look back at the first years of Independence. This probably comes naturally, as, in recent years, directors are making their debut, who were growing up and maturing in that chaotic period of change, which (I think) is etched heavily in their memory.