Croatian films at 25th Kino Pavasaris Festival in Lithuania
Mater, directed by Jure Pavlović, will screen in the European Debut Competition programme of the Vilnius International Film Festival Kino Pavasaris, while two shorts – animated film Imbued Life, by Ivana Bošnjak and Thomas Johnson, and Croatian minority co-production The Last Image of Father, directed by Stefan Đorđević, will screen in the official Short Film Competition. Lithuanian festival Kino Pavasaris is held 19th March – 2nd April, however, this year the festival will be held entirely online, due to the city officials’ decision to temporarily close all cinemas to prevent further spread of the coronavirus.
Jure Pavlović's fiction feature Mater will screen in the competition programme dedicated to European debut feature films. The film premiered at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival and recently won the Nebojša Đukelić Critics Award for best regional film at the International Film Festival Belgrade – FEST.
Directed by Ivana Bošnjak and Thomas Johnson, Imbued Life will appear in the Short Competition programme of the festival in Vilnius. Since its premiere at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen in May 2019, the film has garnered more than 10 cinematic awards.
The same Kino Pavasaris programme will also screen The Last Image of Father, by director Stefan Đorđević, a Serbian-Croatian-Slovenian-Greek co-production, with Danijel Pek of production company Antitalent as the Croatian producer. The film premiered at the Locarno Film Festival and it was awarded Best Short Film at last year’s Sarajevo Film Festival.
The opening film of the 25th Vilnius International Film Festival Kino Pavasaris is Proxima, directed by Alice Winocour and starring Eva Green, while the festival will close with the screening of Xavier Dolan’s Matthias & Maxime.
This year Kino Pavasaris will be held entirely online, that is, all the films in the festival programme will be available via a streaming platform. Find out more about the festival and the streaming service at the official festival website.
Over the course of two and a half decades, Vilnius International Film Festival Kino Pavasaris has evolved into the biggest and most important film event in Lithuania. In 2019, the festival recorded 126,827 visitors, which is almost 10 thousand more than in 2018. The festival programme traditionally focuses on strong authorial visions and cinematic events that combine the film industry with audience learning, offering a chance to exchange experiences and acquire new knowledge.
Cover photographs: scenes from Mater; Imbued Life; The Last Image of Father