After the release of “The Southern Chronicles,” producer Lukas Trimonis couldn’t quite believe the amount of attention the film was receiving in his home country of Lithuania.
“When we received the box office admission results of the first weekend, I had to call our distributor and ask them if there was a mistake,” said Trimonis in a Variety Screening Series conversation moderated by Variety’s Senior Artisans Editor Jazz Tangcay. “I also spoke with my mom and she asked [about] how many people saw it on the [opening] weekend. We said 90,000, and she said, ‘Did all the people fit in?’ We are a country of 2.9 million, and the film was seen by 412,000 people, so percentage wise, it’s one fifth of the population.”
“The Southern Chronicles” follows the story of Rimantas (Džiugas Grinys), a 17-year-old living against the backdrop of Lithuania’s re-independence. As a free-spirited teenager who is interested in playing rugby and messing around with the black market, his future is put to the test when he falls in love with Monika (Digna Kulionytė), where he slowly begins to change the closer he gets.
The Lithuanian Film Centre, the Lithuanian Filmmakers Union and a national selection committee have picked the film as Lithuania’s official candidate for the 98th Academy Awards in the best international feature film category.
While casting for the film, director Ignas Miskinis sought out actors across Lithuania to contribute and tell a coming-of-age story. By seeking out local, up-and-coming actors and students throughout the country, Miskinis found his star and supporting cast throughout Lithuania’s drama schools and conservatories.
“The main cast were in acting school, and during the shooting [of the film], they finished their [schooling],” revealed Miskinis. “For all of them, it was their first film, and now they’re [all] big actors in Lithuania.”
While the film takes place in the 1990s, the team utilized period authentic VHS cameras to create Rimantas’ world while balancing a small budget.
“My vision was to make a movie that looks like it was made in 1994. We refused to use drones, cranes, and digital cameras,” said Miskinis. “We took a 16mm camera and bought some old VHS cameras, and we pressed the rock and roll button.”
Miskinis also sought out professional rugby players for the film’s sporting sequences. He went so far as to enrol in rugby training sessions. While he joked that it was a disaster, the experience helped him understand the game better. “It helped me to communicate during shooting with [the] players because no actors were in the field, only professionals or ex-professionals.”
The film was shot in 25 days on location and three days in the studio. “One day we had eight locations and this was the tempo we were working on,” Trimonis said. “When we finished the film and closed the film, we had a huge inflation during COVID. We had a bit of a gap in the film that we had to look for equity financing. It wasn’t that pretty when we were finishing it. The budget and the financing at that point was a big issue, but that was resolved in the end.”
With the rise in Lithuanian film, both Trimonis and Miskinis are excited to see what the next generation of filmmakers from the country will offer, and what they hope audiences take away from watching “The Southern Chronicles.” “A lot of things changed in over the last 5-10 years when a new generation of filmmakers are searching for their voice, what stories they want to tell, how they want to tell it,” said Trimonis. From the Baltic countries, Lithuanian films achieved the most from the Baltic states in terms of international recognition.”