The war is over, the struggle is just beginning
Lithuania, 1948. The war is over, but the country is left in ruins. 19-year-old Untė is a member of the partisan movement resisting Soviet occupation. The Lithuanians know that they count for little in the scheme of world geopolitics, and that they have been abandoned to Stalin. However, it is quickly apparent that their resistance is fatally compromised as they turn on each other in outbursts of betrayal and retribution. With its sombre tones and Chekhovian tensions, it is easy to see how this mordant drama attracted the curators at Cannes, who made it an official selection this year. Sharunas Bartas has long been a filmmaker to watch with several of his films selected for the Director’s Fortnight.
Sharunas Bartas
Sharunas Bartas was born in Shiauliai, Lithuania in 1964. He has been the artistic director of film studio Banga in Kaunas, Lithuania since 1984. He entered the film school VGIK in Moscow in 1986 and graduated in 1991. In 1989, he founded the film studio Kinema, the first independent film studio in Lithuania. His films include the documentary In the Memory of a Day Gone By (1990), and fiction features Three Days (1991), The Corridor (1995), The House (1997), Eastern Drift (2010), Peace to Us in Our Dreams (2015) and Frost (2017).
