One of the most anticipated events for all cinema lovers who reside in Lithuania – the Kino Pavasaris (Cinema Spring) film festival - for the 16th time proved that spring in Vilnius comes along with the cinema. The theme of the event has been named ‘spectacular and without clichés’ – such a promising way to say goodbye to retiring winter.

This year’s Festival program presented 130 new films from all over the world, including screamers of 2010, which competed for the prestigious Palme d’Or or Golden Bear awards, such as Of Gods and Men, Poetry and Certified Copy, just to name a few. During the latter 2 weeks of March some of them were introduced to Vilnius viewers at the Forum Cinemas, Pasaka and Skalvija movie theatres, located in different parts of Lithuanian capital.

The Film Festival was divided into several sections. There were 54 films shown in a “Horizons” program, 11 films were introduced in the Eastern and Central European section entitled “New Europe – New Names”, and also 9 documentaries. Furthermore, there were also 37 Lithuanian films, among them 13 Lithuanian premieres, so local cinema was also honored.

During the official closing ceremony an international jury, presided by Macedonian film director and screenwriter Milcho Manchevski, announced the winner of the section “New Europe – New Names”  to be a film by Romanian director Bogdan George Apetri „Outbound“ (Periferic). While the CICAE jury (International Experimental and Art Film Theatres Confederation) decided that the best film to fit into European independent film theatres is the film „On the path“ by Bosnian director Jasmila Zbanic. Canadian drama “Incendies” by Denis Villeneuve gained the title of the “Audience’s Favorite”. And finally, the best Lithuanian movie of the year, chosen also by the audience, was „Knygnešys“(Book smuggler) by Jonas Trukanas.

The 16th Kino Pavasaris film festival also launched a series of events and educational projects, such as the meeting of the organizers of Eastern and Central European film festivals and an opportunity for school students from all over Lithuania to take part in the scenario competition and make their own    Unless they can complete the sentence I would leave this out.
This year’s Kino Pavasaris film festival happened to be enormously popular with the audience. Therefore the organizers decided to prolong the screenings for one more week, so people got one more chance to see the movies which they didn’t had the opportunity to see yet.

Founded in 1995 the Kino Pavasaris film festival originally was held in the legendary movie theater “Lietuva”, which is now closed. Right from the beginning the festival was considered to be an ambitious project and promising event to all those who are interested in widely recognized discussable independent cinema.