Focus on cooperation with Baltic countries at the Odessa Film Festival

During the discussion “Opportunities of cooperation with Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia” representatives of the national film agencies from all three countries will present the film funding mechanisms put in place in their countries, share good practice. With the cultural ties between Lithuania and Ukraine strengthening during the past several years, film industries of both countries are seeking and finding partners for joint projects, and a number of co-productions have been launched.

During a special session „Baltic „Works in progress“ projects“ filmmakers will present seven Baltic films currently in production looking for partners and additional funding opportunities. Lithuania will be represented by the filmmaker Marija Stonytė with her documentary Gentle Warriors (prod. „Moonmakers“) and the producer Stasys Baltakis with the feature film Isaac (dir. Jurgis Matulevičius, prod. „Film Jam“). The filmmakers hope that their projects will appeal to distributors, festival programmers and sales agents. Both films are expected to be finished in 2018–2019.

Gentle warriors follows a journey of five girls who chose voluntary military service. They live and train in an isolated military facility among 600 men for nine months. Isaac is a story about a Lithuanian activist who killed a Jew Isaac in Lietukis garage in Kaunas in 1941. After many years, the guilty of murder is to chase his grandson.

The Lithuanian-Ukrainian-French co-production Stasis (dir. Mantas Kvedaravičius), currently in post-production stage, will be presented in the main industry competition programme “Works in progress”, which consists of 11 leading Ukrainian and international feature film projects. Stasis is a psychological drama sweeping in three cities – Athens, Istanbul and Odessa, and weaving the threads of heroes life: Garip killed Ibrahim, Ibrahim and Sofia, who were madly in love once.

The films in post-production stage will be presented to important Ukrainian and international distributors, sales agents, festival representatives and industry professionals to provide wide film dissemination in local and foreign markets as well as to compete for a monetary prize.

There are more Lithuanian accents in various festival film programs. Frost by Lithuanian director Šarūnas Bartas (coproduction of Lithuania, Ukraine, France, Poland), Pretenders directed Vallo Toomla (coproduction of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia) and A Gentle Creature by Sergei Loznitsa (coproduction of France, Germany, Dutch, Ukrainia and Lithuania) will be screen.