Dog Days

An insecure millennial woman pursues her dream whilst learning how to adult. While being preoccupied with life tasks at hand she can barely handle and also severe depression, main character of this film Marta (30) keeps dreaming about making films, drawn to the healing power of storytelling, but not having the courage to act these dreams out; sometimes she is too scared to even pick up the phone. Marta’s life seems to sway both in comic and tragic directions: it’s sometimes a mix of ultimate freedom, sex, drugs, friendship, laughter, alcohol, lots of alcohol, music, honesty and love, and sometimes the reality Marta avoids to face becomes so brutal she can’t take it anymore. Through the course of the film Marta learns there is an unavoidable question that at some point becomes inevitable for almost every filmmaker: if you really want to direct films, can you first direct yourself out of depression?

In 1937, silent film star Maria Leiko travels to USSR upon learning of the birth of her granddaughter. But when she discovers the tragic circumstances of that event, KGB agents persuade her to remain in the country. Leiko abandons her cinema career to instead join Skatuve, the Latvian State Theatre in Moscow. Soon she discovers that she is being manipulated by the government amid its purges of political enemies. As a network of traitors, informers, and NKVD agents surround her, she must choose between family and career, and between her ideals and the lies of Stalin’s totalitarian regime.

When Marija learns that her unstable boyfriend has disappeared, she takes to the streets in an attempt to find him.

A provincial school is waiting for an official delegation from the Ministry who is supposed to bring a new bell. But a bell is not what the school needs... Struggling to survive, the institution is currently lacking the two pupils required by governmental quota in order to stay open. Anticipating the arrival of the delegation, the principal tries his best to hide the real number of students to avoid the unavoidable closing down of the school.

On a hot summer evening, a father and son try to make mother feel comfortable during her final hours at the hospital. The two men do everything they can to avoid admitting it is impossible to do anything more.

A blue screen informs that war has begun. What will be needed? Collect the men, find guns, or maybe someone will give them. We need a location, a country where the war would take place. No problem, the Colonel is a real pro, he has caused wars to order, or on orders, on multiple occasions in different countries. Now his followers have grown up and caused a war in his country. He doesn’t want to, but he has to fight. He is old and tired of war. He wants to be at the table with a steaming pot of tasty mutton ribs and stare at an innocent TV screen with the news on, and the dressed-up news reporter announces that the war has begun.

A CrossFit trainer becomes the father of a baby girl, Snow White. Snow White’s mother dies, and her father marries a young woman obsessed with CrossFit and herself. She works out all the time in order to be the best. And she really is the best – she can do 50 burpees. In the meantime, little Snow White plays and grows up in the CrossFit gym. Time passes, and one day it turns out – while the Stepmother can do 50 burpees, Snow White can already do 53 burpees...

Vilnius, four hot summer days. Goda is learning anew to have a relationship while dealing with past trauma. Juste always had a safe life, planned for her by others, as she finally realizes she wants to decide for herself. After twenty years of marriage Vytas leaves his family, unable to admit his true reasons. The voice of Anatolijus joins all of these stories and experiences into one breathless state, which every character is trying to escape on their way to finding freedom in a constantly changing society that keeps on developing new standards.

A Lithuanian doctor, priest and a war refugee Alexander Ferdinand Bendoraitis (1919-1998) resettles to the Amazonian jungle in the 1960’s and becomes a local hero: he establishes a boat- clinic network, the first jungle radio, starts the pacification of local indigenous tribes and builds the most modern hospital in Amazonia. However, as he gets involved in a brutal crime, countless fake narratives that he had created around himself begin to resurface.

The camera stands in a house, the lens pointing through the window, outdoors, where the occupants of the home are standing. They respond patiently to the camera operator’s directions: a small step to the left, a little bit forward, no, back just a bit, yes, that’s perfect. Dozens of people pose in this way for a full minute. There’s a man who lives alone, a large family, an older woman on a trampoline. Some are entirely at ease, others more self-conscious. Rabbits, dogs, and cats are allowed to join these portraits, too. All of them are captured within the natural frame of the windows, along with the lace or floral curtains.

Marius is a highly successful lawyer based in Vilnius. He becomes obsessed with Ali, a handsome Syrian refugee he first encounters in an online chatroom run out of Belgrade. Marius is rich and enjoys a vibrant social and cultural life. Nevertheless, he feels that something is missing from it. The journey from Lithuania to Serbia is a relatively short one, but can the two navigate their way through the gulf that separates their very different lives? And how do they deal with the precarious obstacles of the physical borders that stand between them? Written and directed by Romas Zabarauskas, The Lawyer questions assumptions about what it means to be an immigrant and the possibilities offered by life in contemporary Europe.

Those of us who fly in airplanes probably don’t think about those who fly through Riga Airport on their own wings. But on any given day, up to 30,000 birds might visit the airport. And it would only take one… Airport wildlife control employee Mareks would like to go to church and light a candle for luck before he goes to work every day. In fact, all of us need that luck – it’s just that we’re not aware of it. Maybe that’s a good thing. Understanding wildlife that might turn up at the airport and making sure that the paths of birds, animals and airplanes don’t cross is a very real job.

Elena meets up with her mother Daiva, who is living abroad and has returned to Lithuania to sell the family’s uninhabited apartment. While Daiva rushes to get the apartment in order before the buyers arrive, Elena has other plans – to get her long-lost mother back.

The intimacy of passing by. Heading home, to work, to see a friend, to buy dinner, or perhaps to the cinema. As the seasons change, we encounter fellow passengers along the way. They commute, sit, wait, get bored, maybe sometimes stare at their small screens more than through the windows – but they always reach their destination. Alongside them are kiosk vendors, vegetable and flower sellers, janitors, and drivers, whose daily routines complement the journeys of the travellers. Public transport stops become intimate crossroads, offering us an unexpected, moving visual symphony of Riga neighbourhoods.

The friendship of a doctor Vitolis Laumakys and an engineer Adolfas Morėnas started in 1962, while fixing a broken motorcycle. That very same year they set up an amateur film studio by the name “The Amateur”. Gradually it became one of the most successful amateur film studios in Lithuania, and their second home. In five decades they created almost a hundred of short films. Although Vitolis and Adolfas are still actively working – digitalizing their film archives, “The Amateur” is facing some unpleasent changes.

Elderly, bald, reserved - one of those characters in one of those Eastern European towns. Nothing too peculiar about him. But his wife becomes suspicious. Perhaps the neighbours would notice it too. Were they not permanently glued to their TV screens, they would notice the outcomes of his secret plan - a personal mission against Nature. In fact, precisely the kind of Nature advertised on TV and eco-packages. The Nature of everybody's dreams. All Is Nature is short Lithuanian arthouse fiction film with a twist of surrealism, exploring how our contemporary lifestyle may influence global environmental processes.