Kostas Smoriginas

The Beast Rising from the Sea

Based on a novel by Evgeny Zamyatin. In 1920s Petrograd, childless couple Trofim and his wife Sofya adopt their late neighbor’s daughter, thirteen-year-old Ganka, only for Ganka to begin a scandalous affair with her foster father. When Sofya’s despair over the incest drives her to murder Ganka with an axe and conceal the body during a flood, Trofim reports her “missing” to the police, who never recover the corpse. Sofya later becomes pregnant, confesses to the killing, and Trofim, moved by love and guilt, offers to take the blame, though the skeptical investigator doubts any crime occurred.

I'll Not Become a Gangster, Dear

A criminal story based on the novels by O. Henry.

Loss

A mentally ill young woman Valda convinces herself that a boy growing up in an orphanage is her child. Following the footsteps of a thousands Lithuanians, she immigrates to Ireland to earn money to save him. "Loss" portrays the beauty and tragedy of the human heart.

Parade

Miglė, who married when she was very young, has for 26 years been divorced from her ex-husband who one day calls her and asks for a favour. He has found that it would be a good time to get married again after the death of his mother. But there is a small problem: their divorce is valid only in the eyes of the law, because a Catholic marriage cannot be divorced. It can, however, be annulled. All that needs to be done is to complete an application and give the “Catholic court” a good reason. But she does not know in what kind of absurd situations she is about to find herself in.

When the Oaks Were Falling

A faithful adaptation of the story of famous Lithuanian author Baltusis both in subject and artistic presentation. Three brothers Laurynas, Stanislovas and Antanas fall in love with one woman Kazyte and dramatic events make all three brothers go to jail for homicide, while she lives alone on their land.

Royal Opera House: La Traviata

Renée Fleming has matured into one of the finest sopranos around at the moment, a true star with a sparkling personality and a velvet-toned voice that is capable of wringing the finest emotions out of works by Strauss and Tchaikovsky that from a lesser singer could sound rather cold and clinical. I wouldn't have thought her voice would be so well suited to Violetta Valéry in La Traviata, and it does take some getting used to, but I think she at least brings a distinct quality to the role with an emotional heart that isn't always necessarily there when a leading diva uses it primarily as a display for her vocal talents. It's served well also by Antonio Pappano's conducting of the Royal Opera House Orchestra in a traditional, but effective production by Richard Eyre.

Walnut Bread

Lithuania, 1977. Memories of childhood, adolescence, and first love in a small provincial town, shown through complexity of human relations at this periodical film.

Whisper of Sin

A nearly-suicidal, young woman visits a psychotherapist. She is in love with a priest, and the diagnosis of her husband's mental illness leaves no hope. The psychotherapist, in her attempts to resolve the amassed difficulties, seemingly begins to duplicate the life stages and behavioral patterns of her patient. A script for this film is based on motifs from the best-seller, scandalous novel, Witch and Rain, by female author, Jurga Ivanauskaite. By choosing a priest as the main role for a love story, the author broke an existing societal taboo. Faith, Love and Hope form the trilogy by the authors of this screenplay. Love stands as the grandest of the three.

A Woman and Her Four Men

An epic tale set at the turn of the 20th century in a struggling fishing community, following the life of a woman widowed at the beginning of the film.

The Coincidence of Circumstance