JBANC’s contributing writer Willa Davis recently interviewed Lithuanian writer-filmmaker Karolis Kaupinis.  Kaupinis provides insight into his most recent film, Nova Lituania, which has been picked as Lithuania’s candidate for the best foreign film Oscar nomination.  He also touches upon his background in politics, career in film, and the similarities that can be detected between contemporary and interwar Lithuania. 

Diptych of Vytautas Augustinas’ original photo of interwar Lithuanian President Antanas Smetona and a shot from Karolis Kaupinis’ film Nova Lithuania
Photo Credit: Karolis Kaupinis

A trailer of the film can be seen here.

Transcript of December 16, 2020 interview:

W: My name is Willa and I write for the Joint Baltic American National Committee.  I thought it would be very interesting to interview you and to hear more about Nova Lituania.  It’s a really beautiful film, so that’s why I reached out.  So, thank you very much for being willing to meet with me today. 

K: Thank you.

W: My first question is: would you mind just telling me a little bit about yourself and your studies and your background?

K: My background is actually political science.  I graduated from Vilnius Institute of International Relations and Political Science.  Did my Bachelor’s there, then a Master’s in Political Philosophy as well at the same institute.  A couple of times I took part in exchange programs at the University of Rome and in Poland, in Krakow, but then I started writing.  I did my bachelor thesis as a film instead of writing a thesis.  That was kind of a documentary film about the concept of freedom in [the] 1980’s in the Baltics: what people actually meant when they were saying the word “freedom.”  That was based on Isaiah Berlin and his two concepts of freedom.  And then I did two fiction shorts and Nova Lituania is my first fiction feature.  So, I gradually switched to cinema.  I worked as a foreign news editor [for the] Lithuanian national broadcaster for a few years.  It had a program there devoted [to] international affairs for a couple of years, but then [I] finally switched to film only.  And now that’s my major occupation besides other works of directing and scriptwriting.  For example, now I’m also working on a museum exhibition in Kaunas as a director, as a curator, if we can say so. 

Karolis Kaupinis
Photo Credit: Square Eye Films

W: What is the museum exhibit about?

K: The museum is [the] Kaunas City Museum.  You have two ideas: what is a city as a structure, as a universal thing, and what is Kaunas as a specific example of a city.  So, we try to combine those two.  If you know where the Town Hall is in the Old Town – this white tower where the weddings take place.  They are renovating the place completely and it’s going to be expanded – the interior space is going to be more for [a] museum.  It should open in 2022 I think, if everything goes according to plan.

W: Kaunas was selected as a European Capital of Culture right?

K: Yes, I don’t know if it’s a part of the whole thing, but I think they certainly are trying to combine the opening day with the European Capital of Culture and other events.

W: I can’t wait to go back and to see the expanded Town Hall.  It’s such a beautiful building.

K: It’s an interesting building.  So many times, it was rebuilt and reconstructed that you see a lot of layers of historical changes in Lithuania, in the building itself you know?

W: I’m sure.

K: Sometimes it’s only an imitation of the past you know, so the question of what is [an] authentic past and what is an imitation of the past is always interesting there.

W: How did your love for movies and film get sparked?  What led you down that path?

K: I don’t know.  It started early in my teenage years.  I attended music school.  We have the system in Eastern Europe of art schools which you take as a post-secondary education.  It’s kind of a combined system.  We have 12-13 classes per week.  And I had a very good teacher [in the] history of music.  She spoke a lot about films and music in films, and she was probably the first person who somehow ignited [this] interest in cinema.  I think it’s just a normal interest of a teenager. Cinema is a powerful means, it’s an effective tool to reach you, combining different languages, arts, lights, picture[s], dialogue, psychology, [etc.].

When I finished my school – the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, they gather a course of directors only every four years, [but] I did not get into this.  I needed to wait for a couple of years, so then I went for politics, and then came back to that [film] without any school.  So, I never had an official film education. I took part in different courses of scriptwriting, mostly workshops, but never a proper film school thing.  I tried to [apply to] Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Roma but they did not take me and that was the only attempt of mine to get on the official track. 

In the way this film making system works in Europe, it’s a bit easier for an outsider to get into, especially in that a small country like Lithuania.  While in the States it’s a totally different type of production and the indie film is [a] way more difficult path in the States for an independent filmmaker.  In Europe you still have state funding and then especially in [the] last 15 years the system in Lithuania has been established and somehow normalized in a way that [allows] a lot of new filmmakers, [to] at least try [once] or a couple of times to make a short film,  and to see whether they succeed or not.  You can get several thousand euros sometimes; you know €15,000 for a short film and that was what I did.  I made a short film.  It was quite successful.  Then I made another one, and I’m always working with the same producer.  It’s a small country so you know everybody.  Of course, out of the lack of money, you sometimes do things for free [for] each other and it’s a kind of community which supports each other.  So maybe it’s not that difficult to start with and get into a step as it would be in a big country, even in a European one.  Let’s say [in] France or Germany, it would take way longer you know.  Once, I was in Los Angeles with my short film in a festival and then I just went to [a] graduation ceremony of some film school, Loyola film school I think it was, and it was in [the] Paramount Film Studio.  I was listening to how those graduates were cheering because somebody got a night shift job in [a] semi-porn shooting, and that was already an achievement to get into this.  It really seemed very strange for me.

W: That’s really great though, that in Lithuania it’s easier to make a film and there is a conducive environment you know to allow.

K: The limitation is always there, especially financially.  But you need to think about it from [a] pretty early stage of script writing, which was also Nova Lituania’s case.  I knew how much money I can get for a film and I knew that it’s a debut film, which is a historical piece, a period piece.  So, I knew it must be mostly interior, a couple of exteriors, you know, and it – you as a spectator either should not feel this or think that it is part of the plan.  I know that I can’t get more than let’s say €400,000 for a debut film and we need to make [a] history piece out of that.  So that’s why sometimes there is this concept of “less is more.” But then less just becomes less when we are talking about art direction, about props, and other things that we use in a film.  So, with Nova Lituania we knew from the beginning that it’s almost impossible.  It would be impossible to shoot it in a sense of, let’s say, this escapist film where we portray what it would be.  I mean a “what if — ” film was not an option.  And so, we needed to find another way to tell the story.

W: What films have been the most inspiring or influential for you and why?

K: An extended list.  It’s difficult to reply. I don’t know.  There is always, maybe, a set of films that you somehow watch, especially when I work and when I’m writing.  So, I usually imagine a film.  I don’t want to find a key which I would use then on and on.  I always want to find a new kind of language to approach the subject, because the subject always comes first.  More than some general desire to, “I want to make a film. What should I make a film about?”  For me, it’s more.  There is the subject, or there is a story, or there is a question, or a dilemma, and then “Should I make a film about it, or maybe I can just make a picture, or maybe I can write an essay and there is no need to make a film.”  And most of the time there is no need to make a film, because nowadays I think there are so many films made that it’s a bit of a waste of time, to work for three years and not say anything new, or not to find a new way to communicate to make that film. 

So, for Nova Lituania, as I knew that it’s going to be kind of a reserved space, confined space, and that all the parts of the film, cinematography and scriptwriting and script and other parts of the film should follow these rules.  So, I was watching a lot of those films that somehow help[ed] me to find the tools let’s say, The Man Who Wasn’t There by [the] Cohen Brothers or Taboo by Miguel Gomez or Pawlikowsk’s Ida.   Probably the biggest help, the biggest inspiration, was actually not cinema but photos of an interwar Lithuanian photographer, who then, just as the prototype of this character of mine, also left [for the] United States after the first occupation.  His name was Vytautas Augustinas.  He was a press photographer, and he would work in the magazines and journals that were loyal to the regime – Tautininkų Partija – the Nationalist Party that was in  authority at that time [in] Lithuania. 

As the photographer, he had this interesting approach where he would always – you see a lot of those photos where he presses the button of the camera two seconds earlier or two seconds later than it is supposed to be pressed.  So, like that, he catches the official, let’s say [a] president or [a] prime minister doing something a bit inappropriate.  Let’s say having a glimpse of doubt in his face or picking [his] nose.  And there was one photo of his where we see, I think it’s a parade of a paramilitary female movement.  So, they are parading for two major political figures, the prime minister and the president.   They are riding the horse-driven cart by the line of those females and the photographer is taking the photo of this ceremony.  But as the president is observing those women in the line, the prime minister is looking into the void, into nowhere.  I was impressed by the fact that he does not follow the ceremony at all in a special moment, in a moment where he should.   When I had the knowledge of what happened later and what is the circumstance of this photo, that it’s 1937 [in] Lithuania, you know what follows next is actually on his mind.  They are getting an ultimatum.  I could [then] imagine what is happening in this person’s mind and somehow that helped a lot to find a figure of this prime minister. 

I knew about the geographer [Kazys Pakštas] for so long, and I read everything he’s written, and I read everything I could get about his life.  I could talk for hours about this person.  But the thing that attracts me the most was an event that truly happened.  I think it was 1938 when the geographer was knocking on different doors of governmental offices proposing this plan or mostly just warning them that what is unavoidable is approaching and we should somehow react to this.  Most people were ignoring him or even ridiculing him because of that.  They were calling him a panic-monger and then [the] prime minister was the only person who took him seriously and said, alright, I’m going to go through your plan and I’ll call you in a week.  And he did not because in a week he had a heart attack.   At the same time, Lithuania got an ultimatum from Poland, which was the beginning of this chain of ultimatums that ultimately led to the collapsing of the country.  So, that was this definite event that I thought, okay this is something that [is] at the same time historical and not [historical], because I know that nothing happened.  It didn’t work out.  But I cannot prove, and nobody can prove that they did not talk, they did not meet, etc. etc.  So that was the core element of the script. 

Another thing was that I was in a workshop led by Polish film director Andrzej Wajda.  We were one of his last students because he died in the fall of that year and the course was in July I think.  He read the script at that time and the script I think was extended into ten years of events.  He said that if you are making a film about [an] apocalypse, it cannot happen just in the middle of the film, so you need to decide whether it’s a post-apocalyptic world or whether we are waiting for Godot, [or] whether Godot is about to come.  So, I decided that I’m going to stretch to basically a year prior to and won’t show what is about to happen.  

W: It’s fascinating that you’re inspired by the photos because when I was in Kaunas I saw a lot of old photos and I thought they were really fascinating – as well with the architecture, which I know is in the film.  It’s very particular and you can really feel that.  You touched on this in the beginning, but I was wondering: how does where you live influence how and what you make? And how do you think Lithuania currently affects your work and process?  

K: I think a lot of filmmakers have said that on and on – and it’s probably kind of a truism. That’s why it gets repeated so often.  But Jean Renoir and Haneke and other filmmakers constantly repeat that you can only talk about what you really know, what is close to you.  Only then you can somehow get onto this universal stage.  I mean to be understood by somebody who is totally not connected with you culturally and it’s always the opposite.  If you aim for something generic and universal, then I think the topic and language and knowledge of details which are the colors and meats of the film always.  It inflates and then you end up making a generic film which is interesting to nobody.

So, I think that yes it influences me a lot, where I live and what is this society, what changes is it undergoing and the benefits and drawbacks of its size, of its composition, of its history.  It’s actually useful because you know with this film I actually thought it’s pretty local as a story and you must have a kind of a background knowledge, a little bit of Eastern European history to understand what is happening, because I don’t like when a director treats his audience as somebody dumber or foolish than he himself and starts explaining things.   Likewise I, maybe, narrow the coverage of how much this film can achieve.   I thought that it’s going to go through a festival circuit somewhere in Eastern Europe – Poland and Slovakia.  It was almost vice versa because it went to places I did not expect them to understand the film, like Egypt or Iran or [the] States, the, you know, distant places.  Chile and Argentina and Latin America and Turkey and everything.  Meanwhile, for our neighbors, it was not that interesting.  Maybe it’s because it’s too similar.  You see yourself in the mirror.  Although in the Baltics it went okay – it went alright.   People in the Baltics generally tend not to watch each other’s films.  Let’s say it’s very difficult to sell an Estonian film in Lithuania and vice versa.  Because you think okay – Latvians – it’s the same.  I see myself in Latvia as [if] in a curved mirror.  You know, I see all the pimples, everything.  It’s like you look at yourself but then you see what you would not like to see in yourself.  So, it works like that a little bit in the Baltics among ourselves.  And so, this film went to places where they had no knowledge of the context, no knowledge of [the] historical concept and still somehow found the connection.  So that proved [to] me that even if I talk about specific things, which are unknown, I mentioned some specific names, I show[ed] some specific places.  It is a tool to reach people.

Another thing I noticed is that probably for people who live in the countries that are somehow geopolitically more [on the] margins or boundaries or you know – it’s a bit easier to understand than it is for somebody who is in [the] center of a continent, in [the] center of history, and who never felt an existential threat of disappearing.  Subconsciously I have this in mind that I’m from a small country which in a certain history might just disappear.  It’s going to be no more, or nobody is going to speak this language anymore.  When you’re talking to an Italian or French or German, they usually don’t have this.  Then it’s a bit difficult for them to understand what that actually means.  In [the] mindset of a Lithuanian who resides in Lithuania, I think in a lot [of] people there is always this subconscious idea that – in case this happens again, I’m going to do this and that.  Or my choices would be those.  The fact that you already have this idea – that the existence of this community is not definite, and you don’t take it for granted already changes the way you think about what’s around you.  So, then let’s say for somebody in Uruguay or Turkey or somewhere who never were a deciding part in a current of history, maybe it is a bit easier to understand this film.  And to understand [the] predominant feeling that these characters handle and take with them.  For example, we sold the film [to] MUBI, which is this big network of arthouse film[s].  So likewise, it went all over the world.  But from [the] reactions I saw that, for example in Great Britain people mostly were like, “What is this? What is this about? It’s so boring.”   They just don’t understand, and I don’t know maybe it’s natural.

W: That makes sense.  I think maybe I now understand because I studied in Lithuania and you know I had Lithuanian peers who would discuss this.  And I remember when I was there the state had started to distribute pamphlets saying in case there is an invasion, these are things that you should do.  I was thinking, oh my gosh I can’t even imagine what that must be like – to always have this subconscious thought as you were saying.

K: Yes, and I think that a lot of people have that and let’s say the new generation that was born after [the] 1990’s – they are the ones that start taking it for granted and maybe think about it the least.  But for me, I was born in 1987 and then [the] first memories I have – they are related to tanks on the streets of Vilnius, basically because we lived on the other side of the big Russian military base where they rolled [out] the tanks to attack the TV tower in 1991 and then [the] radio and television.  That’s one of the first memories I have in my mind.  Where I am walking with my grandma on the sidewalks and it’s all shattered.  The marble is shattered because of the movement of these machines.  So  yes, you cannot just get rid of that if you have a little bit of that stamp.  And maybe if the existence of this country continues uninterrupted then maybe also we would have generation after generation that will stop thinking that it is not for granted.  But as for now – [in the] last years when  Ukraine was attacked that immediately comes back into everybody’s mind. Everybody’s.  You keep on hearing this talk among people.  Everybody is discussing, although nobody actually wants to admit this openly.  But everyone is discussing: “What if?”  That spreads pretty quick, as a virus.

W: In the film you deal a lot with the idea of emptiness and the fact that Lithuania was very sparsely populated in the interwar period compared to other European countries, so this was problematic obviously because there were not enough people to defend the borders or established territories against Germany, the Soviet Union, or Poland.  So, would you say that this notion of emptiness is still something that Lithuania struggles with today and if so, how might that be remedied?

K: Absolutely.  It’s a ubiquitous notion.  And not only in a physical domain, physical sphere.  Part of that emptiness also creates possibility.  That’s what I started with.  You know when you want to make a film, there is [a] place there is space for you to enter, to step in.  And it’s in all the spheres.  I don’t know, [if] you want to buy a house, [to] purchase a cheap house somewhere in the countryside and make a residence there, for us it’s go on, it’s easy.  You have a lot of empty space.   At the same time it’s also emptiness of ideas, provinciality, in the negative sense of margin[s], boundar[ies], province[s].  Something on the verge of two continents, two civilizations, two cultures.  Again, I am not the first to say it.  A lot of intellectuals have lived here. Just what (Czesław) Miłoszsays about it.  If you’ve been to Vilnius, you know it’s surrounded by these hills.  Beyond these hills, you have another world starting.   This emptiness is always there.  Pakštas, the prototype of my character,  has been talking about that a lot, but it is [an] ever-existing topic in Lithuania.

How can it  be remedied – that’s more difficult as a question, because if I would know it, I probably wouldn’t be making films.  I would go into politics and would implement what that remedy is.   I remember once, when [the] Ukraine (issue) started and the whole of this public discourse is all dominated by Ukraine this, Ukraine that, Ukraine this, Ukraine that.  I was working at the TV at that time and a friend of mine  says look, we already have spent a year or two basically worrying about something and not actually continuing with creating things, with living our lives.   You cannot, for the lack of a better term, wait for Barbarians for the whole of your life, because then the emptiness just continues to exist.  So, of course, those recipes from [the] 1930’s when they’re talking about we need to somehow physically fulfill it – I’m not sure.  I think that probably there are parts or lands or territories where they are supposed to be emptier than other[s].  I mean it would be difficult to imagine Iceland as a people standing side by side.  It’s supposed to be empty and that[‘s] what is in your mind. I mean in Lithuania you also see that a lot of people, they just don’t like crowded places.  We are ok with as empty as it is, but it certainly brings certain drawbacks in a lot of spheres.  No good remedies you know.  I don’t have a clear answer to that.

W:  On a similar note, the film touches on the notion of population transfer or resettlement, but in this case it’s focused on the Lithuanian population. Provided that Lithuania had a very large Jewish population prior to World War II, did the film take any inspiration from the Litvaks who emigrated to Palestine to find their promised land?  Do you think that there could have also been a promised land for Lithuanians?

K: This idea of a promised land – it’s pretty complex as an issue because now we are talking about it in the time when the colonialist idea is totally demolished or deconstructed or de-validated.   The mindset of 1930’s – Pakštas is not original with this kind of thinking.  This idea about the promised land wasn’t only a Zionist idea.  A lot of other countries had similar ideas in mind, and I even found in the last book of Timothy Snyder that before the Final Solution the Nazis had – was it Madagascar or Uganda as a place for Jews to be deported.   The Polish government kind of encouraged the Zionist movement, expecting that the Jewish population would transfer to Palestine willingly themselves.

This idea existed everywhere, and I don’t think Pakštas came up with it [in isolation].  He was reading everything that was around him and then I think it came late to Eastern Europe.  Pakštas understood that there is no such thing as a free space, a territory where you would have rivers of milk and mountains of chocolate and no people there.  So, if you are coming in, somebody is there already and what do you do with that and what is your relationship with that.  He actually considers that, but his main preoccupation is [that] he sees the Lithuanian diaspora in the United States slowly disappearing because of assimilation and he has this idea that we are a bit weaker as a culture – weaker [as a civilization].  After the Second World War nobody want[ed] to mention this.  It becomes illegal to talk in these terms of a stronger civilization, [or] weaker.  But at that time, he uses these words, and he says look, when we, as the small culture, are close to somebody big, somebody – you have 400,000 Lithuanians in the United States but then two generations and all of them are Americans. It is unavoidable.  The only way to avoid this is to isolate ourselves a little bit, if that’s possible.   He keeps on searching for a place where that would be possible, but there is no place.  So, whenever he writes about a new place where he’s been to, he always comes to the same conclusion that “Oh, but it’s not okay here,” or “It doesn’t fit,” or “Maybe we should keep on searching.”  It becomes a bit of a utopia from this sense but then in [the] 1930’s it’s more about the place to continue the existence of the state.  It’s not a colony.  It’s never a colony for economical enrichment or something like that.

So, I don’t think we can talk about that in 2020.  Naturally then what you come to is that [a] promised land is where you are, you know?  Or you just need to make a circle around the world so you would understand that whatever trip of yours will end up at the same point where you departed.  And I think the life of this person who was the inspiration for my character kind of proves [it to] himself with his life.  When writing the script for this film, I kind of understood that the spectator or the audience who was going to look at this character – they would see it with today’s eyes.  Before, if I would [have] portrayed him as [a] believer or as we would probably call him “naive” even, as he was at that time, we would treat him as a joker.  A dreamer.  My characters in the film don’t really believe it’s possible.  It’s more therapy.  You understand that the ship is approaching a collision with a mountain of ice and you just cannot sit still and wait for it.  You want to do something, you want to preoccupy yourself.  You know when you have a funeral you have to be there for two days close to the corpse.  I’ve seen it so many times when people [remark] “Should we make more sandwiches for the relatives that are going to come?” “Should we cut cucumbers into thicker slices,” you know, to just [distract] yourself with something so that you would not need to face this major question of existence.  That’s how I treated my characters.

When we talk[ed] with the actors of what do they actually feel and what is their relationship – mostly up to that scene in the sea when they go to the seaside, the main character still thinks that maybe it’s possible in some way.  But from that seaside scene when he opens up about his family situation, I said no – from there on you don’t think it’s possible anymore.  You are just too deep in it and you cannot somehow say okay “forget it,” you know?  He becomes more or less [of a] believer and, therefore, closer to ourselves.  There is a major problem with sincere belief in anything or a sincere belief in a good ending these days.  The American film standard of a happy ending – it’s changing even in the States.  You see so many dystopias these days.  Whenever we talk about [the] future, it’s always a dystopia.  Whenever you see a picture of a happy family, there is always a suspicion that there should be something really dirty under the whole of this, you know?  When you’re travelling through Switzerland, it comes up to your mind that there must be this story about the father who kept his children in a cage somewhere in the basement of this neatly trimmed garden, you know?  A lot of that is in Western culture and the forum. I was a bit aware of that and it’s easier to make this film about Nova Lituania – the paradise in us. But it doesn’t exist [and] another thing, I don’t think we would actually believe in that.  It’s hard after [the] Second World War, after [the] Holocaust, after you know the banal evil of Hannah Arendt and it’s difficult.

W:  How did you decide to shoot the film in Kaunas?

K: It’s because Kaunas is the only place in Lithuania – I mean we are talking about [the] late 1930’s.  So historically Kaunas is the capital of that time.  It’s correct.  Even if I would like to shoot it somewhere else, they would not have the architecture.  I think modernist architecture fits the form o[f] the film pretty well because this Bauhaus inspired modernism or this functionalist style is usually about a clean page, with a well-developed detail.  You have a clean wall with an ornament but not too much.  Or you have symmetrical shapes and then if you have symmetry, it’s only a detail.  Because of that clean lens, because of that emptiness, you pay attention to it.  That’s what this architecture is for me.  And there is no other place besides Kaunas where I could [have] found it in Lithuania.  There are other cities that have a singular, two buildings, three buildings that were built at the same time but then it would be very expensive because we would need to travel all over the country shooting the film.  

While in Kaunas, it was easy.  We were moving hundreds of meters from one shooting location to another.

So again, it’s a limited budget film.  Some of those places, let’s say the Lithuanian Bank, which is pretty well preserved, we didn’t need to change anything there.  It’s not a museum, but it’s a closed space.  They don’t use it, they just keep it the way it is, as it originally was.  And so you just enter, you replace the furniture, and you shoot.  It’s simple you know.  Let’s say the cabinet, the office of the prime minister when he becomes a bank manager.  Other places – yes we needed to change a lot but again that general structure was okay and then it was a privilege to work in these circumstances.  So, there was basically no other option besides Kaunas.  At the beginning we tried [to] location scout in Vilnius, but I think after two weeks we just dropped it.  You know it’s too eclectic to recreate that period and recreate the aesthetics that we needed.  Again, as we analyzed a lot of those photos – they are shot in Kaunas.

W: Sure, of course.  Of course. Definitely. Yes, the architecture in Kaunas is fantastic.

K: Although, we also were discussing Riga with [an] art director of ours. Riga has everything [that] Kaunas has but usually on a bigger scale.  But in Riga you have less of the modernism, more of art nouveau, art deco.  And that’s a bit different style and a bit different aesthetics.  Therefore, and again a bit too far for the budget. So, we needed a place where we would not go too far.  There were only beside the seaside a restaurant which we shot in Vilnius because we did not find any such space in Kaunas.  It was twenty kilometers from Vilnius towards Panevėžys.  A pretty ugly 1990’s building but in black and white.  It just seems it’s a period place.  Well actually in reality it’s a kitsch restaurant.

W:  It all seemed very much related to that time period.  

K: Yes, in color it would seem ugly.  Truly.  Because the chairs are just plastic pieces. But in black and white, suddenly it looked like it’s wooden furniture.

W:  How did you go about casting for the film?

K: In a country like Lithuania, there is no endless option of choices.  If you are in the  business, you know the people you can work with.  And you can almost cast them all.  If we would be in whatever bigger country, let’s say 40 million people then you would have [the] luxury to imagine a character and then search for an actor who can play it, you know.  But in Lithuania if I’m trying to imagine a character who is, let’s say, a female over sixty and needs to have certain facial features, my option of choice is three or four people.  I mean I can work with non-professionals and cast people that are not known and who are not actors but then it’s another type of work.  At this stage of my directorial skills, I did not think I [was] ready for that.  And I wanted to work with professional actors.  So, for certain roles I casted everything I could.  For the role of the prime minister I probably went through twenty-five actors and ended up with the guy who was the first in the casting role – while for some other characters I just had a concrete somebody and did not even try others.  So, it’s different.  Let’s see the president – I worked with him before and I knew he [could] play it.  For the prime minister, it was a huge casting.  It depends.  

It’s a Lithuanian language [film] so you cannot go and work abroad.  It’s the same story with us taking actors from abroad.  It just doesn’t work.  We can work with American-Lithuanians, who are actors but there are so few of them.  Some people already did that – let’s say taking people who live in Los Angeles and have roles in American films but then again, you know, this person comes, he has this American accent and then you need to adapt it.  Okay, so what role is this, so that the audience will hear this person is speaking Lithuanian with an American accent?  It’s a specific type of situation where you need to somehow adapt yourself to it.

W: Of course.  I thought that the man who played the prime minister did such a good job.  His facial expressions were so strong.

K:  With him it’s an interesting story because he himself as a person is a very – if you would think about his character type – it would probably be a choleric type of person.  You know, a very impulsive, loud, and active [person].  He needed to totally close himself down because the facial features, as you said, they just dictate [to] you that he is this modest, timid, type of [person].  But in reality he is not, so it took him some time to understand.  We would make shot after shot and take after take and some takes would be proper but other takes would be way too much, and I would constantly be like “less, less.”  And he was thinking, “Who is this man I’m trying to impersonate?”  Then in a couple of weeks he said, “I got it. It’s my father.”  When he came up with [the idea] that it’s his father, it became so easy for him. Because then you know everything – like what this person would do [with] something, in a particular situation.  I think it’s the same with the scriptwriting.  You never write a character out of the blue. You always have somebody you know, somebody’s character feature you know that you put into a character.  It’s always easier to write somebody according to a living person [rather] than just a fake character.

W: That makes sense.

K: Although those characters here are based on historic[al] figures, usually they are just either relatives or my friends or somebody I know.

W: It makes sense though [that] to fully imagine the character that you need this reference point.

K: Yes, because also you see – what is this historical figure? It’s always a set of features that are already, somehow, a bit too narrow to represent a real human being.  That’s why I did not want to use the real names of – although they are real figures in history and of course people abroad don’t care about that, but people in Lithuania would recognize that.  Some people in the audience, they would even ask [questions] like: “Why is he without a bird?” Or a beard or “Why is that person with a mustache when in reality he was not with [a] mustache?”  I mean it’s not important, but it’s a bit difficult to write a historical figure when everyone already has a stereotype of what this figure was.  While a real human being as much as a real character in a film, I think, is always this kind of contradiction.  You say something and you act differently.  You preach something which you do not subscribe to. Stuff like that.

W: I also really loved the scene that’s in the trailer, when the young boys are sanding the wooden crosses and they replace the photo of the prime minister.  It’s so powerful.  The sounds too.  It’s very sensory.  That one as well is really great.  When I watched the trailer, I thought, okay I know I’m really going to like this film.

K: Although most of those kids – they never actually did anything like that. They didn’t have lessons where they would have.  They [were] always sitting at computers and iPads and everything, so for them the sanding thing was something new.  They needed to learn it before we shot it.

W: The young boy, the one who is I think closest to the camera, he is also so great.  He has this look of like, he’s so confused.  It was very moving.

K: Yeah.  Yeah.  Yeah.  The face fits somehow.  He has something in [his] face.

W: I’ll move onto the last question, which is about Belarus. You know Lithuania has taken on the role of regional leader in this case, and is focused on assisting the Belarussian population with their struggle against Lukashenko.  So, while the situation in Belarus is different in that you have Belarusian people fighting against their own domestic government, can this situation at all be compared to that of Lithuania in the interwar period that’s covered in the film?  Or are there like any themes within the film that could be applied to Belarus, if that makes sense?  So, is there any similarity between these situations?

K: No, I don’t think so.  Not with this film.  I think that’s a totally different story.  Although as a story, I fully understand it and I feel for them and I have perfectly underst[ood] what is happening and what these people are going through.  But I think it’s not in the film.  The period in the film is particular because at this stage of our existence as an independent country, here in Lithuania, we are already somewhere in the stage where the new generation and part of the people [have] started thinking that look, okay – it’s like we take it for granted.  And it was the same in [the] late 1930’s.  This country was already economically developed.  The whole of this generation that established the country, the founding fathers, they were going away.  There w[ere] new people with new ideas that were treating everything differently and you know – I mean in Lithuania our relationship with what is happening to Belarus is that although it’s thirty kilometers to the border, those are two different worlds you know?  Those people are struggling for something so basic that we don’t even value [that] anymore.  Because we just have it, we didn’t need to fight for it. Somebody fought for it but, you know, the river has gone, and the waters have flown.  It’s even difficult to realize the fact that thirty kilometers from Vilnius, people are being persecuted, abducted on streets, tormented in prisons almost to death.  And here I can sit in the center and think whether I should order my food by Bolt or by Wolt and whether it should be from a kebab place or – you know that is as different as it is.  The generation of – this motive of [an] existential threat is still there, and it is easily renewable. 

A lot of people took part in the support [of the] repetition of [the] Baltic Way that happened.  A lot of my friends came from other Lithuanian towns just to stand in the chain of hands reaching Belarus.  I think everyone has this desire to do something meaningful and to [provide] some help.  But I think that our situation [compared] with their situation is really day and night and also at where we are.  Partially I think that’s why it is so tough for them.  It’s because in [the] 1980’s and 1990’s there was the whole block of countries, of societies that were at the same step and all these societies had gone through it and went ahead and now we have different, totally different problems.  While they are making the same step that most of these countries did thirty years ago.  Ukrainians did the same step five years ago.  The later you do it, the harder it becomes.  Because the [fewer] people who are at the same point where you are, the [fewer] you have them around you.  It’s a bit of a tricky situation where people go to support – [the] demonstration [for] Belarus but then they come back to their lives and their lives are totally different.  And then the only connection which you see is that let’s say, I’m walking to the Old Town in Vilnius and I see a bus passing me with people from Minsk riding to work in Vilnius.  And I see their faces. I mean I’m not stupid.  I know where they are coming from.  I know what is happening there.  This is being repeated in the news every day in Lithuania.  It’s not that we don’t think about it, but at the same time it’s so easy to just switch gears.

“I’ve been to Belarus twice and both times – I remember [the] early 90’s. “I remember the sadness and when you go to Belarus, although superficially everything seems, I mean, [there are] clean streets, but it’s too clean.  There is no graffiti.  And everyone is standing, just behaving too properly.  And the facades of the buildings are painted too well, and the colors are too bright.  But then you step into that courtyard and something is totally different.  Pakštas, this prototype of the character of mine, in one of his memoirs in these years, the 1930’s, [in] 1935 he says in a film [that] he goes to a symposium or some conference of geographers in Moscow and while coming back he stops for a night in Minsk I think.  There are lines of his where he says, I cannot actually say what, but there is something deeply wrong in that country.  But he, having no experience of imprisonments, of gulag, of labor camps, of terror, and this fear for life daily, he cannot understand what are these signals he’s seeing.  So, it’s a paradox that Belarus is somehow lagging behind with these aspirations, but at the same time it might look [like] some kind of distorted version of what you easily can come back into, if you don’t cherish what you have.  If you don’t stand for it.  That’s what is Belarus basically.

W: Thank you.  Thank you so much for going through all these questions with me.

K: No bother.

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