A portrait of one man, a national awakening, and cyclical history. Under the steadfast leadership of professor Vytautas Landsbergis, Lithuania managed to break free from its enforced Soviet brotherhood. The events of 1988–1991 are presented through period footage, interspersed with insightful reflections from the main protagonist. The essential anthropologist Sergei Loznitsa again presents history in an agonizingly topical light.
Music professor Vytautas Landsbergis dreamed of living a quiet family life. But in the 1980s, his hatred of communism and his yearning for his country to regain independence led him to enter politics and thus not only to free Lithuania from the oppressive embrace of the Soviet Union but also to accelerate that empire’s collapse. Sergei Loznitsa’s journey thirty years back in time is an almost prophetic statement about the situation today. Period footage showing important moments in the Lithuanian revolution is interspersed with insightful interviews with the film’s main protagonist. This portrait of an engaged citizen and charismatic leader uncovers both the political background of past events and the unsettlingly topical traits of Russia’s great power mentality.
Kamila Dolotina
248 min / Color, Black & White, DCP
Director Sergei Loznitsa
/ Screenplay Sergei Loznitsa, Vytautas V. Landsbergis
/ Dir. of Photography Jonas Zagorskas, Pēteris Sudakovs
/ Sound Saulius Urbanavičius
/ Editor Danielius Kokanauskis
/ Producer Uljana Kim
/ Production Studio Uljana Kim
/ Coproduction Atoms & Void, Current Time TV
/ Sales ATOMS & VOID
Sergei Loznitsa (1964, Baranovichi, Belarus). Selected filmography: Blockade (Blokada, 2005, doc.), My Joy (Schastye moyo, 2010), In the Fog (V tumane, 2012), Maidan (2014, doc.), Donbass (2018), The Trial (Process, 2018, doc.), State Funeral (Gosudarstvennye pokhorony, 2019, doc.), Babi Yar. Context (2021, doc.).
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