Tie2/Svitlana Kostrykina

Kino Pavasaris film festival is definitely the most anticipated event for all the cinema lovers in Lithuania. What does the festival’s team preparing for the attendees – Head of Programme Dovile Grigaliūnaitė told Tie2.

On March, 14–27, Kino Pavasaris will be held for 29th time. What’s new this year? The core of the festival hadn’t change and it never changes for all these 30 years – our aim is to show the most important art house films of this year and also to show what is new and interesting in the contemporary cinema. But festival is growing, sometimes it has some kind of theme, is more focused on some topics.

This year we don’t have one theme of a year – we will have a kind of a slogan or visual identity which invites to the festival saying that “Good cinema does you good”. It means that strong, good, important films, even though they are sometimes uncomfortable, sometimes sad, sometimes their themes are too hard to think of, but they are always worth watching because they can help you become a better person, better understand others and their feelings.

Also this year we’ll have a lot of screenings. Like last year we had something like around 800 – and this year we will have 1400 screenings. So it will be a really huge festival. The number of films is kind of the same as last year, we’ll have the same programs as last year, but we’ll have additional some additional programs.

Maybe I can say that this year the core of our festival are the strongest and the most important art house films of this year, about which everybody is talking and which everybody should watch.

And what will be in Lithuanian premieres program?

In Lithuanian premieres program we will have five feature films and most of them are co-productions with other countries. The biggest film will be “The Peasants” by DK Welchman and Hugh Welchman.  We presented their film “Loving Vincent” some years ago in our festival, and this is their new film. It’s a very big animation film – it was filmed with actors and then almost each frame was painted by the artist. This film also has a very interesting story inside – set in the 19th century in Poland. Creators of the film wanted its style to resemble the paintings of that period. And the painters are from very different countries, also Lithuania and Ukraine. When the full-scale war started, I think about 20 Ukrainian artists came to Poland to paint, and others continued their work in Ukraine, at the animation studio. So there’s a lot of interesting stories around the film, how they managed to deal with the problems and finally made a film happen. And its premiere was in Toronto Film Festival.

Then we will have two films which are co-produced with Latvia. So one is “Maria’s Silence” which has just premiered in Berlinale Film Festival and won a prize of Ecumenic jury. Another one, “My Freedom”, was premiered in Tallinn Film Festival. And then we have two films which were made in Lithuania.

“Life and Death of a Christmas Tree” – documentary film by Arturas Jevdokimovas which takes us to Sakartvelo and Denmark and we follow how the Christmas tree grows. But the title of of a film, “Life and Death”, talks not just about Christmas trees, but people’s life and deaths are involved in the story.

The other documentary film, “Generation.EU” by Eimantas Belickas was stated 20 years ago on a day when Lithuania joined the European Union. So the directors and all the team which changed during these years were following more than 30 kids who were born that day until they they were 18. So this is the film that is trying to grasp what does the generation which born that day looks like. What do they do, how they think, what’s on their mind.

And as always we’ll have short film competition program.

Talking about Ukrainian filmmakers – will Ukraine be presented at the festival?

So we will have three things in our program. In our competition program we will have Ukrainian film which is called “Forever Forever” by Anna Buryachkova. This film traveled a lot: this year it was premiered at Venice Film Festival. It doesn’t talk about war but it’s set in Kyiv in 1990s, portraiting young generation and how they’re trying to rebel, trying to be themselves, exploring sexuality and living on their own.

Another documentary film in our competition program is not directed by Ukrainian but it’s set in Ukraine. It’s called “In the Rearview” by Polish director Maciek Hamela. Maciek was driving a van, taking people from war zones to to to more peaceful zones. People though agreed to be filmed didn’t know that the driver is a film director. So all the movie is set in the van and people are talking about what do they feel and what have they seen, and it’s a very, very strong, interesting film, really amazing.

Also we will have a short film program of Ukrainian films called “Echoes from Ukraine”, they’re all a little bit experimental and they all talk most mostly about war.

And of course, Ukrainians can attend the festival for free.

Apart from movie screenings, what other events are waiting for festival guests? 
There will be a lot, more than 70 things like that. We will have, as always, guests who are coming to present their films, Q&A sessions after films. So we’ll have a lot of guests.

What is new this year – we’ll have artist talk of the director of the animation “Peasants” where he will explain how he made this film and all the techniques he used.

Also we will have a completely new thing: while we always have an opening ceremony of the Film Festival, this year we’ll make opening ceremony for kids in Vilnius, Kaunas and Klaipeda. There will be screenings for kids in all the cities.

This year we’ll have three thematic programs.

One is is called “Dresscode” – we selected 4 films where the costume and fashion are very important, because costumes from the very beginning of cinema are inseparable part of it. We want to show how can costume show the emotional state of a person, how it changes, what kind of collaboration with fashion designers there are etc. At the presenting event will be a lecture about fashion and cinema.

Then we will have a program “Midnight Screams”. Some festival have that kind of a late hour section which which is called “Midnight screenings” – sometimes it’s horror movies, sometimes it’s erotic movies, sometimes it’s B-movies. “Midnight Screams” – this means screams from horror or from passion and there will be erotic horror or horror with erotic or erotic with horror. We’ll have 5 films there and the opening event of a program with a small lecture about horror and erotic films.

We’ll have a lot of educational thing, we’ll a have performance of Italian artists called “Fossick project” –   they will do two performances and one workshop for kids. It’s hard to explain, what they are doing, but it will be a cinematic music performance: live performance with painted things which you can see on the screen and live music.

Will there be an opportunity to attend festival screenings digitally?

Yes, it will be in Telia Play. Subscribers of Telia Play will be able to watch the screenings, other viewers will have an option to buy a movie they want in the application.

How would you describe the mood of this year’s Kino Pavasaris?

Many people were asking: why there is not that much comedies (even though we have comedies) or bright films, feel-good films in our program? And I think the answer is very simple. We are living in that kind of state of the world right now, surrounded by wars – so how there could be more comedies and bright films when directors are creating their films about the things which are important to them at the time? So our program reflects not just the artistic aims of the directors, but the state of the world and what is important for the people at the moment. So I think when you see the program, you will see very quickly that the themes are mostly about the suffering of the people and where is the humanity and what does it mean to be a human being and how to find peace in many, many different ways. One of our biggest films is about migrants, and our opening film which is always a kind of statement will be “The Zone of Interest” by Jonathan Glazer which was premiered in Cannes, it won prizes there, it has a lot of Oscar nominations. So this is one of the most important films of the year. This is the story about a real person, Rudolf Höss, the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp. He was living with his family, wife and kids, in a house which stood just on the different side of the wall with Auschwitz concentration camp. So the film is about how they are building their dream life for them and for kids and they have beautiful garden but all the horrors are happening just behind the wall.

In this film you never see any violence but you just hear it because it’s behind the walls. So why we chose this film? Because it’s not just about Holocaust but about our reality. This film is trying to say to us: don’t be a bystander when that kind of things are happening just behind the wall or the border, doesn’t matter. So it’s about us also. As I’ve told you before: what does it mean to be a human? What side we decide to take: to be a bystander or not, to live knowing that so much horror is happening close to us or not? So we decided that it’s important to open the festival in that kind of note. Also we want to say that to open the festival, to watch films, to live in the free country – it’s something that you should not take for granted.