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If you haven’t followed the rise of Lithuanian cinema on the global film festival circuit in recent years, you may not know the name of young filmmaker and cinematographer Vytautas Katkus – yet. But when the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Kviff) recently unveiled that his feature directorial debut, The Visitor, would world premiere as part of the Crystal Globe Competition of its 59th edition, the consensus among insiders of the independent and arthouse film scene was that this amounted to a major coup for the Czech fest!

“It’s the end of summer. Danielius, a new father in his mid-30s, leaves his family in Norway and travels to his native Lithuania to sell his parents’ flat,” reads a plot description for The Visitor. “He tries to reconnect with old friends, but the strong bond he once had with them is now broken. Instead of rushing back to his...

The Gran Canaria-based gathering is celebrating its 20th anniversary with a programme also partially viewable on Filmin, while its Mecas market will unspool its fourth edition. The Filmin platform continues to be a key ally in these pandemic-riddled times, and the Las Palmas International Film Festival, which is being held physically (while adhering to the requisite health-and-safety measures in order to avoid infections) on Gran Canaria, has made a sizeable portion of its programme available on said website. The gathering, which kicks off on Friday 9 April, will continue unspooling until the 18th. Ten features will be duking it out for the Golden Lady Harimaguada Award in its Official Section: standing out among them are Goodbye Mister Wong by Kiyé Simon Luang (France/Laos), which tells a story based around a lovers’ tiff; Exemplary Behaviour by Audrius Mickevicius and Nerijus Milerius (Lithuania/Bulgaria/Slovenia/Italy); the documentary No Kings (Brazil/USA/Italy) by Emilia Mello; Radiograph.

Titles are split between Coming Soon and Industry Screenings.

Meeting Point - Vilnius, the industry strand of Vilnius International Film Festival, has expanded its selection for its 2021 online event, confirming 32 projects today.

The projects are selected across two strands: 24 are in the Coming Soon pitching selection, consisting of 12 fiction features and 12 documentaries; with a further four of each in the Industry Screenings.

Some 23 countries are represented among the titles, including Maysoon Pachachi’s fiction feature Our River… Our Sky, a co-production between the UK, France, Germany, Qatar, Kuwait and the UAE, in the main Coming Soon strand.

Further sections of...

As with most festivals in a pandemic world, Slamdance Film Festival is changing things up with their 2021 edition. Moving a few weeks back to February 12-25, no longer directly competing with Sundance Film Festival, the festival will be taking place primarily virtually. In quite a feat of accessibility, a full festival pass is also now available for free––if you secure yours by December 31st. After that, they are going up to $10, which is still a steal.

The festival has also announced its full lineup, with 25 features along with 107 shorts and episodic. Films, Q&As, and panels will be available on Slamdance.com, AppleTV, Roku, Firestick, and YouTube, while in-person events will take place in Joshua Tree with drive-ins open to the public on February 13th and 14th as well as the closing night screening at a Los Angeles drive-in on February 25.

Check out the lineup below and reserve your festival pass here.

Titles from Bosnia & Herzegovina, Lithuania, and Italy also selected.

Cannes 2020 official selection title Gagarine, and Halina Reijn’s Dutch thriller Instinct are two of the six titles nominated for the European Discovery 2020 Prix Fipresci.

The prize is presented annually as part of the European Film Awards (Efa) to a director for a first full-length feature film.

Written and directed by Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh, and co-written by Benjamin Charbit, Gagarine is about a teenager who fights to save his home town – named after Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin – from demolition. France’s Totem Films sold US rights to Cohen Media Group...

It was the final festival under Leena Pasanen as Christoph Terhechte takes over for 2020.

Audrius Mickevičius and Nerijus Milerius’ Lithuanian documentary Exemplary Behaviour, a film about murderers serving life sentences in prison and their efforts to change their ways in a bid to return to society, has won the Golden Dove of the international competition at Dok Leipzig in Germany.

The Lithuanian-Slovenian-Bulgarian-Italian co-production also received the Fipresci international critics’ prize and prize of the interreligious jury.

Mickevičius was inspired to make the film following the murder of his brother. He went to the Lukiškės prison to examine the paradox of...

The Lithuanian title has won the International Competition, Safety123 picked up the Next Masters gong, while Status and Terrain came out on top in the German Competition. Lithuanian filmmakers Audrius Mickevičius and Nerijus Milerius' Exemplary Behaviour (Lithuania/Slovenia/Bulgaria/Italy) has triumphed at the 62nd Dok Leipzig International Documentary and Animated Film Festival, which took place from 28 October-3 November. The film, which explores guilt and atonement, as experienced by two convicted felons serving life sentences, bagged the festival’s main award, the Golden Dove International Competition Long Documentary and Animated Film, which comes with €10,000 from broadcaster Mdr and makes the picture eligible for the Oscars, as well as the Fipresci Prize and the Prize of the Interreligious Jury. Russian filmmaker Elena Kondrateva's Puberty received the Golden Dove Short Documentary Film, while Iranian director Gorgam-o-Gale Mibaram's Am I a Wolf? pocketed the Golden Dove Short Animated Film. Both prizes are worth €5,000. The.

The official selection of the 62nd edition features 161 films, including 63 world, 27 international, 12 European and 50 German premieres. The 62nd edition of the International Festival for Documentary and Animated Film Dok Leipzig (28 October-3 November) will open with the world premiere of The Forum by German filmmaker Marcus Vetter. Expectations are high, as Vetter and producer Christian Beetz are the first in the 50-year history of the World Economic Forum (Wef) in Davos to succeed in sending an independent film team behind the scenes of this international gathering. The Forum is part of the festival's International Competition, which also includes the world premieres of Audrius Mickevičius and Nerijus Milerius' Exemplary Behaviour (Lithuania/Slovenia/Bulgaria/Italy), Nasser Zamiri's Family Relations (Iran), Manfred Vainokivi's In Bed with a Writer (Estonia), Susanne Kovács's It Takes a Family (Denmark), Maria Arlamovsky's Robolove (Austria), Johannes Holzhausen's The Royal Train (Austria/Romania) and Tamara Stepanyan's Village of.

Psychological drama takes the Grand Prix plus best actor for Elliott Crosset Hove.

Hlynur Pálmason’s psychological drama Winter Brothers won the Grand Prix at the 23rd Vilnius Film Festival ’Kino Pavasaris’.

The international jury for the newly created European Debut Competition declared the film “heralds a new voice in arthouse cinema”.

The Danish-Icelandic co-production, which premiered at Locarno last summer, also picked up the best actor award for Elliott Crosset Hove.

Winter Brothers is being handled internationally by New Europe Film Sales.

The jury gave the best actress award to Darya Zhovner for her role in Kantemir Balagov’s coming of age drama Closeness,...