15/04/2016 - The Swiss doc festival has scheduled the world premiere of I’m Not from Here by Giedrė Žickytė and Maite Alberdi

The Swiss documentary festival Visions du Réel (15-23 April) will this year focus on documentaries from Lithuania. This focus will include a retrospective of films by Audrius Stonys, and screenings of I’m Not from Here and Mariupolis [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Mantas Kvedaravicius
film profile].

Stonys is considered one of the most renowned Lithuanian filmmakers, and the retrospective of his works will consist of 18 documentaries – ranging from his debut 1989 film, Open the Door to Him Who Comes, to the most recent, Gates of the Lamb, released in 2014.

“I adore the films of Audrius Stonys,” says Luciano Barisone, director of Visions du Réel. “We have screened his films at our festival before, so I thought it would be the right time to present a full retrospective. His works reveal invisible aspects of the physical world and open up a different cinematographic perception where words as the key medium are replaced by images and silence.”

Visions du Réel will also hold the world premiere of the film I’m Not from Here by Giedrė Žickytė and Maite Alberdi. The development of the movie began during the DOX:LAB workshop of the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival in 2013. It is the first result of the cooperation between the Lithuanian Film Centre and the Copenhagen gathering.

I’m Not from Here tells the story of an elderly Basque woman, Josebe, who has come from San Sebastián in Spain and now resides at a home for the elderly in Santiago, Chile. Every day, she believes that this is the first day of her visit to the home, and every day she struggles to come to terms with the fact that it is not.

Finally, Mantas Kvedaravičius’ film Mariupolis – following the tense events in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol – has been selected for the Regard Neuf programme. The world premiere of the film took place in the Berlin International Film Festival’s Panorama section.