The Living Heroes

In the late 1950s, regional cinemas asserted themselves throughout the USSR by screening the first works of the nation’s newest generation of directors, screenwriters and actors. The Baltic SSRs in particular set out to leave a mark on the art of cinema – and by the mid-1960s, Soviet Lithuanian films were among the hippest and most avant-garde works available. The Living Heroes is a manifesto for the wonders ahead. While Balys Bratkauskas would only have an intermittent career as a director, Arūnas Žebriūnas, Marijonas Giedrys and especially Vytautas Žalakevičius turned into star auteurs. Here, each shows a formidable finesse with the short form. Four anecdotes about children and youngsters are told, each set in a different historical period (an independent Lithuania in the late 1930s, World War II, post-war, the 1950s). What unites the episodes is a shared sense of poetics – a fascination with realism, a feeling for the extraordinary in the smallest of gestures. (International Film Festival Rotterdam)