Lithuania regained its independence from the Soviet Union in March 1990, turning into the primary former Soviet republic to take action. Its movie trade has in recent times made waves on the movie pageant circuit with social dramas, gangster thrillers, and eccentric slice-of-life movies. However its submission for one of the best worldwide function Oscar 2026 is taking us again to the early days of independence.
In case you are craving interval oufits, Nineties design, and a soundtrack filled with Eurodance classics, from Tradition Beat’s “Mr. Useless” to Technotronic’s “Pump Up the Jam,” Ignas Miškinis’ The Southern Chronicles (Pietinia Kronikas) has you coated. You wish to watch a coming-of-age story? Once more, this one is for you. The identical is true if you wish to get a glimpse of a few of Lithuania’s up-and-coming actors, or if you’re simply curious what the highest-grossing Lithuanian film of all time seems and seems like.
Oh, and it gained the Baltic competitors on the 2024 Tallinn Black Nights Movie Competition (PÖFF) and 12 awards out of 14 nominations on the 2025 Lithuanian Silver Crane Awards, together with for finest function movie and finest director.
Tailored from the bestselling novel of the identical title by Rimantas Kmita, the movie follows the story of Rimantas, a 17-year‐outdated rising up in Lithuania within the Nineties. Whereas extra keen on rugby, music, and avenue life, his encounter with Monika, from a extra middle-class household, opens him as much as literature, tradition, and a special method of seeing the world. The screenplay is by Eglė Vertelytė. The solid options Džiugas Grinys, chosen as one of many European Taking pictures Stars 2024 on the Berlinale, Robertas Petraitis, who stars on this 12 months’s PÖFF noir thriller The Activist, Digna Kulionytė, and Irena Sikorskytė, amongst others.
Lithuanian director Ignas Miskinis
The Southern Chronicles brings to the display a mixture of Nineties nostalgia and angst. Miškinis recollects not being positive when he was approached about directing the mission. “I felt we had been slightly bit late for the ’90s,” he tells THR. “And I didn’t wish to make a film with a standpoint from our days. I used to be making an attempt to keep away from any distance. My imaginative and prescient was to make a film not about 1994 however to make a film which seems prefer it was truly made in 1994.”
The director was a youngster himself again then. “We didn’t have YouTube or Fb, however we had MTV,” he recollects. “MTV was nonetheless music tv in 1994, so my thought was to make use of the media, the instruments from the ’90s reasonably than any superficial technical gear. The price range was additionally not so big, so every part was like within the ’90s. However the cause why I selected 16 millimeter movie and VHS cameras was a part of my imaginative and prescient that this isn’t a film in regards to the ’90s, however that it must be a film from the ’90s.”
The songs licensed for The Southern Chronicles weren’t fairly to his style again within the day. “I used to be extra a headbanger with lengthy hair, and I hated these Tradition Beat, Snap or no matter or so,” Miškinis tells THR. “This wasn’t my music in any respect. Even Metallica was too tender for me.”
However the director and the remainder of the inventive staff agreed to take off their specialists’ and critics’ hats. “We switched to imagining we heard [Metallica’s] ‘Nothing Else Issues’ or ‘Mr. Useless’ for the primary time,” he stated. “That was very fascinating and humorous.”
The movie is ready in, and was filmed in, Šiauliai, “the capital of rugby in Lithuania,” explains Miškinis. How was capturing the rugby scenes?” Technically, rugby is tough to shoot, as a result of you’ve gotten lots of people in a scene, and we had been making an attempt to construct an genuine story, so we thought everybody ought to play, not act,” the director recollects. “Live performance scenes the place we had a reside efficiency and on the similar time we see the principle storytelling with our actors concerned had been additionally tough.”
However by way of rehearsals reasonably than technical challenges, small scenes can even trigger a whole lot of work. Notes Miškinis: “You’ll be able to possibly say that nothing occurs, however that is when chemistry occurs between the actors.”
‘The Southern Chronicles’
Courtesy of Baltic Crime
So, does the director look again on the Nineties in Lithuania with nostalgia? Removed from it. “For me, the ’90s had been probably the most horrible time in my life,” he tells THR. “Not just for me, for my complete era. We acquired independence. I hate the phrase ‘post-Soviet.’ It means possibly you might be nonetheless slightly bit Soviet. However that point was so darkish for me, as a result of I used to be a youngster, and there was a lot corruption, crime, every part. It was just like the wild, wild East, a wild time.”
He as soon as even tried to jot down a script in regards to the interval, “and it was far, removed from a comedy,” Miškinis shares. “So, once I first acquired the provide to make The Southern Chronicles, my response was no, I don’t wish to make a comedy about that point. Go away! However after we began to develop it, I spotted that possibly it’s my downside. And possibly it’s a method to speak about that point that will likely be simpler for me and the viewers to look at it with slightly little bit of a smile on the face and to snicker at ourselves and on the ’90s.”
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