WE CHOOSE TO ACT.

As a festival, we have stated our strong opinion, regarding the war in Ukraine - what’s happening is undisputedly wrong. We have reacted to this chain of events by joining a petition initiated by the members of the Ukrainian Film Academy to boycott Russian cinematography. Also, we have eliminated all Russian films and co-productions from the programme of our festival as this is not the best time to nourish Russian culture.

Together with „Pasaka” cinema theatre we’ve organised the Day For Films From Ukraine. It took place on March 23 - one day before the festival and during this day we presented films from Ukraine. All the revenues were donated to the support funds for Ukraine, indicated by the creators of the films. We’ve also included a special film package #StandWithUkraine in the programme of the festival. It was available for our online audience during the whole span of the festival.

We have initiated the Ukrainian Day in our cinema industry event „Meeting Point Vilnius”. Our aim was to design one-day event in order to highlight what is the status of events from political, institutional and film industry point of view, so to have the common strategic position of the European Film Industry. We strive to take action in such a sensitive situation and be a real meeting point, where discussions lead to decisions.

We invited all Ukrainians to see movies in Vilnius and Kaunas for free during the festival. A proof of identity was needed when arriving to the cinema theatre for a chosen screening.

We also had two special films in our programme - "Petite Maman" (dir. Céline Sciamma) and "The Dragon and the Freckled Beauty"("Belle", dir. Mamoru Hosoda), which were dubbed or subtitled in Ukrainian.

We are planning even more initiatives associated with the situation in Ukraine in the future. To exist, we need unity.