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Drawing inspiration from classics like Friday the 13th, filmmaker Jonas Trukanas has made his narrative feature debut with the slasher movie We Might Hurt Each Other (you might also see it referred to as Rupintojelis or Pensive) – which also happens to have been the first slasher movie to be made in Lithuania! It’s good to see another country finally catch up on the awesomeness of producing slasher movies. We Might Hurt Each Other has now been released through the Screambox streaming service as a Screambox original, and you can watch a trailer for the film in the embed above.

I was given the heads-up on this project by my colleague Mike Conway, who thought it might be right up my alley due to the fact that Friday the 13th is my favorite horror franchise. And he was correct. I’m always hoping to find another good slasher movie to watch,...

The next Screambox Original horror movie, We Might Hurt Each Other is Lithuania’s very first slasher movie, and it’s headed exclusively to Screambox on Tuesday, July 11.

Lithuania’s first slasher pays tribute to the golden age of the subgenre while infusing an influence from Eastern European folklore. The clip below sets the plot in motion…

“After classmates destroy life-size wooden folk art statues during a wild high school graduation party at a remote cottage, a mysterious killer starts picking them off one by one.”

We Might Hurt Each Other is directed by Jonas Trukanas and co-written by Trukanas and Titas Laucius, with Emilija Sluskonyte producing. Marius Repsys, Sarunas Rapolas Meliesius, Povilas Jatkevicius, Gabija Bargailaite, and Saule Rasimaite star.

Start screaming now with Screambox on iOS, Android, Apple TV, Prime Video, Roku, YouTube TV, Samsung, Comcast, Cox, and Screambox.com.

And don’t miss We Might Hurt Each Other,...

Stars: Šarūnas Rapolas Meiliešius, Gabija Bargailaitė, Marius Repšys | Written by Jonas Trukanas, Titas Laucius | Directed by Jonas Trukanas

Wooden sculptures of the Pensive Christ can be found in the weirdest spots all through the Baltic States. They combine folk art and Christian traditions into a singular entity concerning the fear of being judged. And that’s what is about to happen to the usually risk-averse Marius as he organises the venue for his wild high school graduation party at a remote cottage. For his drunken and drugged classmates destroy some life-size wooden statues and almost immediately a scarred, masked and mysterious killer starts picking them off one by mutilated one.

A typical kids go to the woods to party and get killed one by one is given a wrinkle in the stereotypical story, with a hero who is anything but. He is a bland, boring character with no purpose in life…...

Slashers are rarely a hard sell. Find a group of teens, plonk them in the woods and send a raving maniac after them with something sharp. It’s horror at its simplest and most entertaining. Even the bad ones deliver enough fun and catharsis to almost always satisfy a hardcore genre crowd. In fact, these days, nearly half a century on, most are very deliberately derivative. It’s part of the charm. Sure, the good ones – those that understand the careful chemistry of horror and comedy – stand head and shoulders above the rest. But ultimately, a body count is enough.

So to stand out and do something genuinely different with the genre, as Lithuanian director Jonas Trukanas and his team do here, isn’t just brave – it’s also what some would call “stupid”. Subverting expectations is a dangerous game after all, especially when those expectations are as closely guarded...

When the European Film Market kicks off in Berlin on Feb. 16, the three Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania will share the stage as the EFM’s joint Countries in Focus. The showcase, which is supported by the Estonian Film Institute, the National Film Center of Latvia and the Lithuanian Film Center, will offer a range of events within the framework of the EFM, along with a selection of market premieres and screenings of Baltic films already making waves on the festival circuit. Twelve up-and-coming Baltic producers will also be presented to the international industry during a happy hour on Feb. 17 in the Gropius Bas.

Here’s a selection of Baltic buzz titles that the region’s top producers will be taking to Berlin:

Last Sentinel

Director: Tanel Toom

Producers: Ben Pullen, Ivo Felt, Jörg Bundschuh, Pippa Cross, Matthew James Wilkinson

Kate Bosworth stars in this sci-fi thriller from...

The small absurdities of both institutions and families go on parade in Titas Laucius’s directorial feature debut. Migle (Rasa Samuolytė) is used to taking the lead, not just as the conductor of the school’s orchestra but also in the home she shares with her second husband Ignas (Valentin Novopolsky) and their teenage daughter Gabriele (Barbora Bareikyte), but all that is about to change.

Laucius shows his aptitude for situational humour from the start when, after a band room spot of Abh - an amusingly worked incident in its own right - mother and daughter hop into the car with Ignas and begin a philosophical debate on the rights and wrongs of violence to solve an issue. Beyond the back and forth, the humour of the scene chiefly comes from the fact that Ignas is using his car as a sort of Uber-style taxi service, meaning that an unsuspecting passenger is.

Titas Laucius: 'My closest friends say that I'm 70 years old, in my head, in my soul. I really like the feeling of nostalgia and I wanted to get this feeling' Photo: Courtesy of Poff Titas Laucius shows a knack for absurdist comedy in his very funny first feature Parade, which sees a woman, Migle (Rasa Samuolyte) become embroiled in Catholic bureaucracy as she tries to help her long-ago divorced ex (Giedrius Savickas) annul their marriage in the eyes of the church, while also facing the more immediate problem of her daughter (Barbora Bareikyte) quitting the school orchestra she conducts. In addition to his own film, which had its world premiere in the First Feature Competition at Tallinn Black Nights, he also co-wrote horror film Pensive, which had its premiere in the festival’s Baltic Competition strand. We caught up with the director in Tallinn to chat to him about comedy,...

Titles include Ivan Gergolet’s ‘The Man Without Guilt’ and Neil Maskell’s ’Klokkenluider’

Estonia’s Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (November 11-27) has unveiled its first feature line-up which includes 10 world and 10 international premieres.

Scroll down for full line-up

Among the world premieres are Italian director Ivan Gergolet’s debut fiction feature The Man Without Guilt, a Slovenia-Italy-Croatia co-production that received €140,000 in Eurimages funding last year. Gergolet’s documentary feature Dancing With Maria screened at Venice’s Critics’ Week in 2014 and was nominated for a European Film Award.

Also premiering is Fisnik Maxville’s The Land Within, about the...