Lithuania has selected Laurynas Bareisa’s Pilgrims as its entry to the international feature film category at the 2023 Academy Awards.
Pilgrims won the best film award when it debuted in the Horizons section at the 2021 Venice Film Festival. Subsequent festival prizes included best screenplay at last year’s Thessaloniki International Film Festival.
It was then nominated for 11 prizes at this year’s Lithuanian Film Awards, winning four – best film, best director and screenplay for Bareisa, and best actor for Giedrius Kiela.
UK-based Reason8 is handling world sales on the film, and has previously secured deals for North America (Dekanalog) for a theatrical release, plus Central and Eastern Europe and the Baltics (HBO).
The film was released theatrically in Lithuania this year by Kino Pavasaris Distribution, the distribution arm of the company’s leading film festival Vilnius International Film Festival Kino Pavarsaris.
In Pilgrims, a young man and woman travel to a small town where a gruesome crime was committed, where they learn it is not as easy as expected to revisit the past.
The Lithuanian Oscar entry is selected by a national Oscar committee, and confirmed by the Lithuanian Film Centre and the Lithuanian Filmmakers Union.
Lithuania made its first Oscar entry for the 2007 awards; this is the country’s 15th entry since then, with no nominations to date.
No comments yet