Kino pavasaris melts the quarantine ice: a red carpet was laid out for outdoor guests

On Thursday evening, Vilnius welcomed the “Kino pavasaris” festival with bright city lights, bridges and fountains.

The opening ceremony of the Cinema Spring took place at the Hotel Pacai. At the end, the opening film “No hay mal” (dir. Mohammad Rasoulof) was screened, reflecting in a particularly impressive way the festival theme “Acting and / or being?”. Awarded the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, the film highlights themes of moral force and the death penalty.

See the opening photo gallery:

The Cinema Spring program also maintains a wide variety of films, themes and cinematographic languages ​​this year. “By asking” Act and / or be? “We invite the audience to engage in conversations about the motives for personal and community behavior, about freedom and responsibility, to look for connections between the past and the present,” says Mantė Valiūnaitė, the artistic director of the festival program. Together with the organizing team, he hopes that the films screened this year will bring new thoughts and feelings to the unified days.

“In a world where planning is difficult, something has to be stable. We invited filmmakers and spectators to the international festival “Kino pavasaris” for the 26th time. And if spring irrevocably begins on March 1, our festival always presents a cinema menu to viewers around the third week of spring. And spring becomes unimaginable without cinema ”, admits Vida Ramaškienė, founder, founder and director of the festival.

At the opening ceremony of Kino pavasaris in the hotel courtyard, Vilnius Mayor Remigijus Šimašius especially highlighted the creative attitude of the festival team: “Last year, when there was no film festival in Europe, Vilnius organized it. This year, the pandemic has not yet abated, but Cinema Spring has again sought and found new ways, inviting the cinema to the rooms of the city’s hotels, showing once again what can happen when the festival, the city and hotels are concentrated. I am sure that Kino pavasaris will establish itself as one of the most creative of the Olympiad of the European Film Festival. And it gives a strong boost to the next decades. “

Watch the video of the ceremony:

The organizers had prepared up to five stages for this year’s festival. “We could not predict the circumstances in which the festival would take place, so the team was looking for ways to discover the most suitable way that would combine both electronic experiences on the Internet and real emotional experiences. It seems that we are scheduled to perform “, – Agnesta Filatovė, executive director of” Kino pavasario “, is happy to receive the opening day of the festival.

Having started a regular film festival last year with moviegoers in theaters and long-awaited meetings with filmmakers, the festival organizers had to quickly reorient themselves – the pandemic and quarantine they started brought films into electronic space. And this year such a scenario could be expected, but the festival organizers did not want to miss the opportunity to experience a real live festival celebration.

“The forms of the festival are changing, but the festival itself is not,” says Algirdas Ramaška, CEO of Kino pavasario, promising that the usual elements of the film festival will be felt during the “Holidays with Kino pavasaris”. Even six hotels in Vilnius and one in Kaunas invite movie fans to their rooms and offer to spend a trip full of unusual impressions with the best films in the world. The hotels are preparing special offers for the spectators, and Kino pavasaris will ensure that the festive atmosphere accompanies the spectators throughout the festival.

“These experiences are like a way to make sure that the festival events really take place, that we don’t live in the internet space, nor in the matrix, but in the real world. Combining our real and virtual ideas, we created a different festival but a festival, – says Agnesta Filatovė and adds that the support of the audience is important and necessary for the Cinema Spring team like air. Only he can redeem what is put on the festival. “Humans, like everyone else, are going through the inconveniences of quarantine, our personal experiences and our psychological states.”

The Cinema Spring team, which has overcome the challenges of the last few months, promises an impressive and memorable 26th festival. “He will be the best he can in this difficult time. We hope that the public will appreciate it by watching our films,” hopes Vida Ramaškienė, the creator of Kino pavasario. His idea is continued by Algirdas Ramaška: “We dream of open cinemas, we store a part of the movies on the show for them, which we can’t show virtually during the festival. We long for the feeling of cinema very much. “

As long as it is not possible to watch movies on giant screens in cinemas, the festival organizers invite you to create at home. Isn’t it a tempting opportunity to invite the best directors and actors in the world, the most successful and award-winning films from the most important festivals, to an unusual, different and therefore very exciting world? As it unfolds in a stylized neon-lit film from director Burhan Qurbani about the dramas of Berlin’s criminal world, “Berlin. Alexander Square ”or in the Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude’s tragicomedy about the confusing moral principles of“ Failure in Fucking or Sly Porn ”, or in the French comedy“ Triumph ”based on real events by Emmanuel Courcolo.

The festival, which will take place from March 18 to April 5, will invite you to watch films in the virtual cinema “Kino pavasario” and on the online home theater platform “ŽMONĖS Cinema”, click here to select the films desired.