The main prize of the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland went to Toxic (Akiplėša), a feature debut by the Lithuanian filmmaker Saulė Bliuvaitė. Another Lithuanian, Laurynas Bareiša, snatched the best director award.
“We are delighted with the success of Lithuanian filmmakers at the prestigious 77th Locarno Film Festival: the main prize, the Golden Leopard, was awarded to the debut feature Toxic (produced by Giedrė Burokaitė) by director Saulė Bliuvaitė,” the Lithuanian Ministry of Culture announced in a Facebook post on Saturday.
The film also won the award for best debut and two cash prizes from the Ecumenical and Youth Juries.
Toxic tells the story of two girls entering adolescence, searching for their identity in a bleak industrial area. The film will be released in Lithuania next spring.
Bliuvaitė directed the short documentary Limousine, which premiered at the New Directors / New Films Film Festival in the USA, organised by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. Limousine was named best short documentary at the Warsaw Film Festival in 2021.
At the same time, Laurynas Bareiša won the best director award for his film Drowning Dry (Sesės, produced by Klementina Remeikaitė, Matiss Kaža). The actor ensemble of Gelminė Glemžaitė, Agnė Kaktaitė, Giedrius Kiela and Paulius Markevičius won one of the two acting prizes.
The film tells the story of two sisters who spend a weekend with their families in a farmhouse, but when a disaster strikes, their lives are changed and they are forced to learn to live with the consequences.
This psychological drama will be released in Lithuanian cinemas on September 20.
Two years ago, Bareiša won the Horizons programme of the Venice Film Festival with his debut film Pilgrims (produced by Klementina Remeikaitė).
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