Best Lithuanian documentary movies

The incredible story of the 1992 Lithuanian basketball team, whose athletes struggled under Soviet rule, became symbols of Lithuania's independence movement, and – with help from the Grateful Dead – triumphed at the Barcelona Olympics.

The enigma of the personality cult is revealed in the grand spectacle of Stalin’s funeral. The film is based on unique archive footage, shot in the USSR on March 5 - 9, 1953, when the country mourned and buried Joseph Stalin.

In Miglė Križinauskaitė-Bernotienė's "The Bearers of Memories", what the filmmaker remembers of her late grandmother is being slowly eroded by time, the starting point to a contemplative search of rural landscapes, an old photograph, an abandoned dwelling, and the faces of others, all strikingly captured on 16mm and enhanced by an intricate acoustic score.

They're called water carriers, domestics, 'gregarios', 'Sancho Panzas' of professional cycling. Always at the back of the group, with no right for a personal victory. These wonderful losers are the true warriors of professional cycling.

In the Cold War years of the 1970s, an American patrol boat meets a Soviet ship off the east coast of the United States for talks about fishing rights in the Atlantic. In the midst of this, while Russian commanders are aboard the U.S. Coast Guard vessel where the talks are being held, a Lithuanian sailor jumps across the ten feet of icy water separating the boats. Crash-landing on the deck of the American ship, he desperately begs for asylum. Though they try, the Americans ultimately fail to provide protection and the Soviets are allowed to capture him and brutally return him to their vessel. Thus begins a stranger-than-fiction story of imprisonment, discovery, fame, and freedom. Through rare archival footage and a dramatic first-person re-enactment of that fateful day by Simas Kudirka, the would-be defector himself, this tale of one of the biggest Cold War muddles takes us on a journey of uncanny twists of fate, and the emotional sacrifices of becoming a universal symbol of freedom.

A documentary about Lithuania's first female president and her 10 years in office.

Celebration in a country of basketball. Lithuania, probably the only country in the world where basketball is routinely described as a religion, hosts the most important basketball event of the year - the European basketball championship or EuroBasket 2011. The biggest nation's pride, Lithuania's national basketball team has a long winning tradition. The entire Lithuania is waiting only for the gold. However the team's star player Linas Kleiza has suffered a serious injury and will not be playing for the championship.

More than a hundred members of the Lithuanian film community have joined together in a voluntary film project "Letter to Ukraine", which aims to record what is happening in our country at this difficult time. The film focuses on a person close to the war: a passer-by, a protester, a volunteer, a medic, an artist.

Documentary about a hospital ward for children with leukemia in Lithuania.

With striking images and meticulous sound work, Burial reminds us of the paradoxical relationship between scientific development and the destruction of nature. Questioning the effects of human activity on the planet we inhabit and which we have put at risk, the film focuses on the unsolved issues of nuclear plants and nuclear activity.

The Lithuanian scientist Ausra Revutaite has spent 30 years in the Tian Shan mountain range in Central Asia, straddling the borders between Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and the autonomous Chinese region of Xinjiang. Some 3,500 meters above sea level with only her faithful dog and gray cat for company, she studies climate change on the Tuyuksu Glacier at an old Soviet-era research station. She loves the solitude and silence that her painstaking work brings her. Magnificent shots of her surroundings and everyday work are interspersed with archive footage of the people who preceded her by a century. Not much seems to have changed.

It was the year 1984 when a group of architects decided to organize a one night music band as a New Year's party joke in Kaunas, Lithuania. The joke proved to be so good that rumors about the new exciting rock band spread from lips to lips and soon their intellectual circus grew into the Rock Marches - massive events involving thousands of people - that transformed into the big meetings for Lithuanian Independence later named the Singing Revolution. This is the story about the people who raised their independence with the smiles and songs regardless of the danger of the situation.

Everyone in Lithuania knows Vytautas Kernagis – heard him singing, saw him on stage, or hosting TV shows. The public constantly saw Kernagis and thought they knew and understood him. But Kernagis was convinced that the artist must always remain somewhat mysterious. However, still living in the Soviet Union, he was among the first ones to buy a personal video camera in the mid-1980s and has documented his life on a VHS camera for more than ten years.

Lithuanian photographer, the legend of Soviet Sixties' generation Vitas Luckus tragically passed away in 1987. Yet the life and times of the talented rebel still impassion and lead us to a journey questioning why, at all times, we are wary of those who are really free.

At the beginning of the 1960s, when the French pioneers of cinéma vérité set out to achieve a new realism, and when direct cinema in Québec began to vie for notice, the Baltics wit-nessed the birth of a generation of documentarists who favored a more romantic view of the world around them. This meditative documentary essay – from a Latvian writer and Lithuanian director whose composed touch has long dovetailed with the stylistically diverse works of the Baltic New Wave – pushes adroitly past the limits of the common his-toriographic investigation to create a portrait of less-clearly remembered filmmakers. The result is a consummate poetic treatment of the ontology of documentary creation. Also a cinematic poem about cinema poets.

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.

The film - an open, sincere, warm and funny story about Arvydas Sabonis life and career. This is particularly characteristic of a T-shirt with the number 11 worn out 2.20 m tall basketball giant Olympic and world champion, portrait.

Jonathan Meades examines the cult of Stalinism through its buildings and monuments.

The film is a day in the life that passes by, even if it seems neverending. In the morning the streets are alive with people, pedestrians and cars, with loud and exultant noise. Such sounds accompany the restless walk of a woman and her child across a dusty street, while Bartas’ gaze wanders through many different perspectives.

History of Teutonic Order and Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania.

A documentary about the rock pioneers and legendary rock bands of the 1960s-1970s in Lithuania, an era that brought with it the extraordinary power of youth, the hunger for new ideas, the infinite thirst for freedom and the love of music.

Between 1944–1953, courageous resistance movement took place in the Baltic region of Europe, uniting the partisan troops for struggle against the Soviet Union. “The Invisible Front” was a coded name used by the Soviet Interior forces to describe the resistance movement in Lithuania. Film depicts the story of the fighters through the words and experience of the partisan leader, Juozas Luksa, and interviews with eyewitnesses of those events - both the partisans and the Soviet fighters. Tales of horror, torture and courage are told in the rare archival footage that has never been screened before, and interviews with the surviving members of the resistance movement.

The film relates the story of the Kriauleidziai family, who lost the roof over their heads after fire engulfed their home. It also demonstrates man's ability to come to terms with misfortune, not to lose heart, but to start afresh.

Domingo Domingo, a witty Valencian orange farmer, tries to stand up to the multinational companies that oppress the humble workers of the land.

Sorrow does not come merely from contemplating death, which forces us to look into Eternity, but also from life, which compels us to confront Time", wrote Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyayev. Renowned Lithuanian documentarist Audrius Stonys took these words as a motto for his latest film, a meditative visual essay which portrays old people undertaking all kinds of activities, meditation and group laughter therapy. Without a single word of commentary, he creates from sophisticated, aesthetic images a compelling study of human corporeality which, in an ideal union with spiritual equilibrium, can sustain us with the pledge that old age doesn't have to be a painful wait for the last breath.

Ever wondered where the clothes at your local second-hand shop came from? A tangled net of murky charity clothes business is spreading out across the entire UK. From London to Lithuania, the journey of the donated garments is accompanied by a hidden life of Lithuanian emigrants in the business. In this documentary comedy with a touch of a detective drama, we will follow lives of four vivid characters, who have cultural clashes, tragicomic incidents yet manage to retain passion and irony in the cruel and inhumane environment.

"Lithuania is a Force" is a long-term documentary about the life and historical events of informal youth in Lithuania in 1984–1992: dissident rallies, persecution of the KGB, punk rock, protest concerts. Rock musicians testify to this. The documentary includes songs by the groups „Genocidas Raudonajam Interventui“, „WC“, „Už Tėvynę“, „Hidroelektra“, „Foje“.

The documentary filmmakers Marta Dauliute and Viktorija Šiaulyte step into the closed-in collective with as much curiosity as much-needed skepticism. Here, capital is synonymous with the individual’s ability, and innovation is the confounding keyword. At the same time, we get to know those who rent a little “pod” that barely offers space for a bed and desk, raising questions about how the entrepreneurial ideology affects us as people. Good Life reflects on a modern phenomenon, where community has become the product of a company, but which at the same time reminds us of other collectives from a completely different time.

Basketball players on the court, businessmen in their spare time and carriers of the spirit of freedom in Lithuania - that's the "Žalgiris" Kaunas team of 1979-1989. Historic battles against the Red Army, which cannot be forgotten by those who watched them and which the new generation of basketball fans must learn about.

The film features an incredibly low angel’s flight over the dunes of Nida, Trakai castle, the lakes of Aukstaitija (Highlands), the roofs of the Old Town of Vilnius and the fantastically beautiful church steeples. It’s like a mystical gliding just above the treetops, meadows covered by early morning mist, as well as the narrow streets of Vilnius.

A documentary about Lithuania's secret special task force, which operated in 1991.

The first blueprints for rockets could be found in a treatise, Artis Magnae Artilleriae (1648) by inventor K. Simonavičius. And how many Lithuanian astronauts were there? Two. And one of them was an architect. Ozė (V. Ozarinskas, 1961-2014) was an exceptional figure in the Lithuanian cultural scene. His works stand out in their scale, depth, and originality. Especially inconvenient to the viewer is Ozė’s “black” creative period. But is black color only the symbol of despair? Astrophysicists estimate that the better part of the Universe is composed of invisible dark matter. Seems like Ozė knew that very well.

Conversations On Serious Topics is a film without exterior action, props, landscapes or special effects. Its main characters are children and teenagers with a special ability to describe the surrounding world. Intimate conversations with them reveal the picture of the modern world -- at times melancholic, at times comical, at times dramatic. Shot in a minimalist fashion, the film raises questions about loneliness, love, God, the world and human relations. "The world is people." "Don't you believe in God? I can teach you how to start believing..."

The "Field of Magic" is a docu-poem about people living for over two decades in the Buda forest, near the closed down Kariotiskes dump in Lithuania. After four years of work, this film captures the perspective of the dump dwellers. It tells the story about the dissolving community, its uniqueness, daily routine, specific way of life, every-day joys and sorrows.

A sad child is going to pay a visit to her mother in prison. Her solitude is immense. Sitting in the backseat, she looks on in silence outside the window while the landscape passes in front of her eyes.

An isolated village in the Lithuanian countryside. Seated in her house, an elderly woman recites an old folk story. Then she climbs up the tall ladder that takes her to the rooftop of the church.

The author Jurga Ivanauskaitė (1961-2007) was considered a pioneer of contemporary Baltic literature well beyond the borders of Lithuania. Her work deals intensively with the tension between religion, sexuality and emancipation. Film documents and interviews serve to reconstruct the life of this independent and willful woman - from her childhood to her artistic breakthrough as a companion of the Lithuanian rock and punk scene, but also depicting her spiritual side, which brought her all the way to India, where she turned to Buddhism. She is shown as fighting for the Dalai Lama and a "free Tibet", shown as a literary mind, but first and foremost she is shown as a woman who stood bravely in the face of inconvenience, pain and inner demons.

After Lithuania regains independence from USSR, 'children of Freedom' sails the world. The yacht was their best friend and a prison at the same time, carrying them across the ocean waves, trying to figure out - what is freedom after all?

The storyline begins with Muza's childhood in the grip of the Soviet occupation regime. After winning the Liszt-Bartok International Piano Competition in Budapest, Muza starts receiving invitations to perform at Europe's foremost concert halls, but, alas, the Iron Curtain descends and she is no longer allowed to go abroad. Muza finally gets her chance in 1989 when the Soviet Union begins to collapse. Hard work eventually brings international recognition. The film depicts Muza's renewed battle with isolation as she is once again not fully able to perform due to the pandemic.

The film springs from at least three ideas connected to each other in an irrational way: the story of a cow being taken to the butcher, the description of simple pleasures, how to ascend to the top of a hill and descend in a wheelbarrow, and the portraiture of a several blind people. The great, big eyes of the cows are seen in contrast to the unseeing eyes of the blind people.

Like everything rotates around: vodkas searching, vituperation, floating barge, wind gusts. It seems the people, and the nature feel approaching farewell, and intermittent band, repetitive shots and phrases, accentuated the importance of the passing moment.

A collection of intimate thoughts, read aloud, that become the soundtrack of one of Jonas Mekas beautiful film journals.

The film features excerpts from conferences on the preservation of Holocaust remembrance, as well as authentic documentary footage from Lithuanian Jewish life.

Photographer Snieguolė Michelkevičiūtė, began creating a series Women on Men in 1977, which sharply stood out from the creative context of the time. Her photographs record nudes of older men. For a long time, the artist’s works were considered unusual and ignored. The documentary attempts to unravel the creative processes behind the scenes and to grasp the conflict between the artist and the creative object.

Nadia, Teresė and Ramutė are the three heroines of this documentary. Although they are very different, they are united by their unusual work - for decades they have been making a living by posing for artists. For Janina Lapinskaite, it is not the exotic profession that is important, but the stories that have marked these women's bodies over time. The heroines of the film talk openly about their choice of work, their colourful, albeit difficult past, and their equally difficult present - they bare not only their bodies, but also their souls to the camera.

"After “Antigravitation” I wanted to make another step up, where disappears last prop under your feets. “Flying Over the Blue Field” – movie about loneliness in infinite sky. Man stays with himself, home-made plane and balance on the limit between death and life." - Audrius Stonys.

Portrait of the famous Lithuanian prose writer Grigorijus Kanovičius.

Documentary film, which, based on the stories of the participants and witnesses of the uprising, the comments and assessments of historians and scientists, reproduces the development of the events of that time with authentic archival material, reveals their tragedy and significance for today's Lithuanian history.

This film features the life of a pilgrim-photographer currently residing in Hungary. It records a short fragment of his search in Lithuania for his roots.

The life of an anti-social family living in Lithuania. The film tells the story of the children's loneliness and their attempts to change their life circumstances.

We follow Roberta's transition from youth to adulthood. It is an intimate portrait of a person who is floating in time and space, without finding purpose in life. She doesn't want to be bothered by society, but cannot deny that she's dependent on it.

The film analyses the problems of raising crime among unemployed youth.

The director Rimtautas Silinis combines together metaphorical frames and plot lines, puts Lithuania's past and present next to each other, revealing historical experiences and cultural heritage.

"To make this film was a very old dream. The shooting started in 1988, before gaining the independence. Only being of father Stanislovas was something incredible these days. Unlocked doors from his barn where were stored priceless reliquaries, books. Not locked church with artworks inside. Unconditional trust... It impressed not only me." - Audrius Stonys.

A moody portrait of Lithuanian Jewish writer and literary critic Jokūbas Josadė, who looks back on his wasted life.

With this film a cinematographer Rimvydas Leipus made a debut as a documentary film director. By casting its gaze to the periphery of Vilnius, Užupis, the film follows the tradition of the first generation of independent filmmakers. The result is the mute portrayal of a furnace caretaker Jonas Valeiša and a graphic artist Šarūnas Leonavičius.

In this experimental documentary, film director Algimantas Maceina reveals the theme of the exile of Lithuanian society from a very personal perspective. He films the repatriation of the remains of his grandfather from Siberia to Lithuania. This personal approach to societal tragedy – the genocide caused by the Soviet regime – links personal to collective memory and erases the boundaries between personal film archives and publicly acknowledged films.

The first autumn snow is falling. At the same time a man passes away. Death comes with the beginning of winter.

The film tells about the pre-war Lithuanian Jewish community, reflects on its death as an irreparable loss of the country. // LFC.lt

Scenes from Vilnius, the city breathes new beginnings, change is in the air. Then clouds gather and a storm breaks out. Long thought to be lost, this film by Barysas is one of his most beautiful.

Ruta Meilutyte is one of the most recognizable and likeable people in Lithuania. She inspires the young generation to chase their goals and the rest of us - to be proud of Lithuania. Ruta is much more than a great athlete, she is the symbol of today's Lithuania. Currently a documentary is being produced that will allow the viewers to see Ruta's daily life from up close and hopefully understand a bit more about the amount of hard work that goes into preparing for this short distance swim.