Three Lithuanian Films to Premiere at the Venice Film Festival

Three Lithuanian films will premiere at this year’s Venice International Film Festival: Tomas Tamošaitis’s virtual reality film Eyes of Shame and two Lithuanian co-productions, Letters from the Silenced Country and Imperium. The festival’s independent section will also screen a film shot by Lithuanian cinematographer Vytautas Katkus.

Taking place on the Lido di Venezia from 2 to 12 September, the Venice International Film Festival is the oldest film festival in the world, first held in 1932. Alongside Cannes and Berlin, it is considered one of the world’s leading international film events, presenting new works by established filmmakers, introducing emerging talents and bringing together different forms of cinematic expression.

Lithuanian works will compete in Venice Immersive, the festival’s competition dedicated to extended reality, for the third consecutive year. This year, the programme will feature Tomas Tamošaitis’s animated VR film Eyes of Shame, a co-production between Lithuania, France and Croatia.

The VR experience invites viewers into the inner world of Eyeless, a 14-year-old admitted to a hospital for troubled teenagers. Carried along by the fragmented flow of her thoughts, the viewer moves between her everyday life in the hospital and fragments of her childhood. Tamošaitis, the film’s creator, director and producer, worked on the project for almost a decade, bringing together animators from Europe, Mexico and Japan to realise his vision.

The screenplay was written by Tomas Tamošaitis and Emmanuel Rouglan. Skirmanta Jakaitė served as art director and lead designer, while Arminas Didžiokas worked on the film’s 3D characters and environments. The music was composed by Jonas Jurkūnas, with sound by Vygintas Kisevičius.

Following its world premiere, the film will be presented in Lithuania at the BLON Animation and Video Games Festival and the Inconvenient Films festival.

The official Venice Open – Out of Competition section will present two Lithuanian co-produced documentaries: Imperium and Listy (Letters from the Silenced Country).

Directed by Belarusian documentary filmmaker Andrei Kutsila, who lives in Poland, Letters from the Silenced Country portrays contemporary Belarus through the stories of people who have experienced imprisonment, repression and forced exile – voices that an authoritarian regime seeks to silence.

The film combines observational documentary with personal archives, surveillance footage, police recordings, found footage and animation based on drawings made in prison. In a country where speaking openly has become dangerous and people are afraid even to discuss politics, their letters reveal experiences filled with pain, love and hope.

Letters from the Silenced Country is a co-production between Poland, Germany and Lithuania, with Giedrė Žickytė of Moonmakers serving as the Lithuanian co-producer. The music was composed by Vygintas Kisevičius and Paulius Kilbauskas, while Saulius Urbanavičius was responsible for sound.

In Imperium, master of archival cinema Sergei Loznitsa once again turns his attention to the Soviet era, this time drawing on footage filmed across the Soviet Union by Italian filmmakers between 1970 and 1973. Discovered at the Archivio Audiovisivo del Movimento Operaio e Democratico in Rome, the material struck the director with its sharp contrast to official Soviet film production of the period.

Beginning in Moscow, the film soon moves towards the outer reaches of the empire, revealing a variety of cultures, religions and ethnographic traditions. At the same time, it exposes the power relations between local communities and their colonisers. Through this archival material, the film constructs a portrait of Russian imperialism – both as a historical force and as one that continues to shape the present.

Imperium was made by filmmakers from Germany, Italy, France and Lithuania. Its Lithuanian co-producers are Uljana Kim and Ignas Dilys. The sound was created by Vladimir Golovnitski, the film was edited by Audinga Kučinskaitė and Sergei Loznitsa, Jonas Zagorskas worked on the restoration of the footage, and Vladimir Tarasov served as music supervisor.

The competition programme of Giornate degli Autori, an independent section held alongside the Venice International Film Festival, will also present I Plant My Hand in the Garden by Hoda Taheri and Boris Hadžija. The filmmakers, originally from Iran and Serbia and Montenegro respectively, live and work in Berlin. The film was shot by cinematographer Vytautas Katkus, with colour grading by Justinas Vencius.

The film follows Hoda and Boris, who are expecting a child and decide to marry and start a family. As their wedding approaches, they begin to realise that taking this step may require them to reconsider what it means to be a couple.

On the cover – a still from Eyes of Shame.