We all have people in our lives to thank and acknowledge. Lithuania, our state, has also had friends along the way, whose help, advise, support and cooperation has accompanied our historical moments and achievements. Now, we take this opportunity to simply and openly say "Thank you".
On 16 February 2018, Lithuania will celebrate the 100 years to the restored statehood. In the run-up to this event, Lithuania launches the "Ačiū" ("Thank you") campaign.
Personalized "Ačiū"/"Thank you" postcards will be sent out to those who have contributed to Lithuania's success. This simple human action also serves as an introduction to the upcoming important celebration in 2018.
The campaign started on 29 March, a historic day of Lithuania's accession to NATO. The NATO and EU memberships were the most recent historical achievements of our state. We wish to celebrate this by remembering those who were with us at this important moment.
Emilia. Breaking Free is a suspense drama about the fight for freedom in the Soviet-repressed Lithuania. It is the spring of 1972, when young people take to the streets of Kaunas to demand freedom for Lithuania, and Emilia – a future actress – is marching with the protesting crowd towards the life of their dreams. But everything takes an unexpected turn. Destroyed destinies are the smallest price the movie heroes pay for their unconditional love for their country and their unforeseen love for one another.
He is the one who witnesses, and collects evidence that proves the daunting crimes of the Kremlin and joins the armed resistance against the Soviet regime. He soon becomes a legend among his peers. To girls, he is John Wayne, the Hollywood Icon. Guys see him as an insurmountable obstacle in matters of love. He is destined to take part at the historical march to the West and inform the US Congress of the Baltic States' struggle for freedom that keeps the hope for independence alive over the long years of the entire ColdWar.
Animated film based on the poem by Justinas Marcinkevičius. The mighty army of mushrooms is ready to take over the forest. They only know that they are too small for this battle.
11 March 1990, the Supreme Council of Lithuania proclaims the restoration of the independent state. Gintaras Karosas, a 22-year-old student of the Vilnius Academy of Arts begins the creation of an open-air museum of modern and contemporary art. The occupation army marches across Vilnius. At the same time, Gintaras cuts shrubs in the forest, moves boulders, removes garbage from a pond and places the first sculptures. The fight of the Lithuanian people for freedom and the creation of the Park of Europe by Gintaras symbolise the victory of progressive thought over the obsolete totalitarian Soviet system.
In the year 1247 an elite soldier – leitis, arrives at the village elder's house. As assigned by The Grand Duke, the village elder is responsible for border intelligence. To help the elite soldier at the border, the elder sends his young, inexperienced son. An ordinary task becomes a real challenge as both men are threatened not only by enemy soldiers but by strange and mystical creatures as well. The price of the experience and title is life itself. It's a legendary tale about the medieval Lithuania.
Rūta is a compelling biopic that tells a story about one of Lithuania's most renowned sports figures – Rūta Meilutytė, her recent career developments and personal life events. This documentary portrays the swimmer's tough childhood and her rise to fame from her first strokes in the pool, to winning Olympic gold and beyond. It is a story of a fifteen-year-old swimmer from Lithuania skyrocketing from an unknown to a world-class olympic medalist overnight, not yet realising how this will afect her life in the years to come.
In 1990, every boy in Lithuania watched VHS karate action films and wanted to be a super hero. The fight for Lithuanian independence in 1991 gave a group of young men the chance to do just that. The L-Team is a partly-animated, feature documentary about a dozen hand-picked teenage boys who formed the first ever SWAT-like squad in 1991, just months after Lithuania declared its independence. Without proper training but with extreme courage, they were willing to stop Soviet tanks with their bare hands and the kicks they had seen on VHS movies.
Shine is an animated short film, which pictures a symbolic fight for the Lithuanian language during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This is a poetic ode to Lithuania and its difficult struggle to keep the Lithuanian language alive through the historical changes. Dramatic exile to Siberia, Lithuanian book smuggling, various movements for independence - all of it is encoded in the beautiful stop motion pictures, which are inspired by the works of Lithuanian painters, who worked during the Soviet time.
This film is a witty tale about the first encounters of American Lithuanians with their occupied motherland. Their experiences, as the feelings of those who waited for them in Lithuania, now appear strange, charmful and sad. The images of their occupied homeland, documented in amateur films, reveal the reality of the Soviet past, the mentality of the exodus, and the distinctive comprehension of Lithuania at the time.
This documentary tells the story of the poetic Baltic documentary and its creators – the filmmakers who broke the propaganda documentary traditions of the Soviet Union in the 1960s. The film's journey leads us to the grand masters of the poetic Baltic documentary, their films, and a unique collection of archives promising a discovery of a new wave in the history of cinema.
Trail of Angels – a tribute to famous Lithuanian painter and composer M. K. Čiurlionis. It's an immersive virtual reality animation project which invites the viewer to explore the magic world of M. K. Čiurlionis's paintings and interact with its environments and characters while listening to the music of this outstanding artist.
Film is based on a true story of a priest and writer, journalist and Fraciscan monk Juozas Tumas Vaižgantas. A touchstone of pre-war independent Lithuania, his personality embodies the idea, that a modern state is first and foremost a cultural project. His good-humored posture and deeply Cristian values created a legend of genuinely free personality, unstoppable as the voice of conscience, the inexhaustible negotiator between the indissoluble positions. The legend of Tumas' life and work has inspired many to resist the attempts of enslaving one's mind.
Veteran mountain climber Algimantas Jucevicius once said that the biggest victory one can achieve is to leave one's home. He's inspired hundreds of people to leave their comfort zone and expand their horizons. This film will follow Algimantas' latest expedition to the Tian Shan mountains in Kyrgyzstan. We will walk side by side with Algimantas and will get to know the character of this leader and adventurer and his perspective on taking risks, facing extreme conditions, losing friends and gaining wisdom.
A documentary about a brave adventure in 1919 happening in Paris. We are guided through the bends and curves of the history by a fun and curious girl, a student from Sorbonne University. Together with her, we meet interesting personalities, looking for photos, movie frames and those expressive details in puzzling mazes, from which we are putting together a mosaicas a story, which happened exactly 100 years ago. By following the foot steps of history we end up in Paris, which suddenly becomes the important character of the movie itself.
Together for 100 years is a project of artistic visualizations that feature memoirs, experiences and life stories of the contemporaries of the Republic of Lithuania and their families, through photographs and documentary films. Authentic stories of the centenarians tell us how the most important developments in the State of Lithuania changed individual lives, and how we have transformed, together with the State, over the century.
In the beginning of 1941, a young girl is getting ready for her studies in the art school, her first dates – all the summer fun,when one night the Soviet secret police barge into her home, tearing her family from the comfortable life they've known and forcing Lina, her mother, and her younger brother onto a train to Siberia. Lina's father is separated from the family and sentenced to death in prison. This is a captivating story showing the strength of the human spirit and telling about the love and hope that help Lina to hold on every day. But is love enough to survive?
Gentle Warriors follows a journey of five young girls who chose voluntary military service. They live and train in an isolated military facility among 600 men for nine months in Rukla, Lithuania. This film is a coming-of-age story of a girl becoming a warrior – in the military and in her own life.
Antanas Mockus' mother Nijole Sivickasis a restless woman at her 85. She spends her time in the silence of her atelier, experimenting and meditating, planning and forgetting. She rarely goes out, and has refused for over ten years now to take part in exhibitions and art galleries. This film is an anintimate portrait of an extraordinary woman through the eyes of her best work of art: her own son.
Dramatic story of the heroes of the film unwinding in the post-war Lithuania is genuine and painful with its humanly and piercing theme of the guilt and the contrition. Josef, the hero of the film, having eluded the destiny of his parents to be gunned down, has to make his choice: to blame or to forgive. Which way will he choose? Whom will he give his voice for, when the offence is so great and the reverses of fortune are so severe?..