24/08/2022 - The feature follows the twilight years of Irena Veisaite, a Lithuanian theatre scholar, Germanist professor and Holocaust survivor

Lithuanian documentarian Giedrė Žickytė is now working on her new outing, a documentary feature titled Für Irena. Žickytė’s most recent picture, The Jump [+see also:
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Für Irena zooms in on the last few years of an extraordinary woman, Lithuanian theatre scholar, Germanist professor and Holocaust survivor Irena Veisaite. “Never take revenge,” Irena’s mother told her before she was executed by the Nazis. These words kept Irena from feeling blind hatred even in her darkest hour. Born in 1928, Irena barely escaped perishing in the Kaunas ghetto. She was taken into the Christian family of a Lithuanian woman who had six children of her own. After the Soviets occupied the country, the woman was deported to Siberia. Losing her two mothers – one Jewish, killed by the Nazis, the other Catholic, sent to the Soviet Gulag – made a huge impact on Irena. In the secret ghetto school, Irena read Schiller’s Ballads, and after the war, she decided to study German literature. As a survivor of two totalitarian regimes, Irena dedicated her whole life to resolving conflicts between people and cultures, and healing trauma in society.

In detail, the documentary promises to offer “an authentic look into a century of war, atrocities, loss and, ultimately, forgiveness through the eyes of a woman who has lost everything but love”.

Speaking about the project, Žickytė said: “Jerusalem of the North, that’s what Vilnius was called before. More than 95% of Lithuania’s Jewish population was massacred over the three-year German occupation – and that is the highest percentage of Holocaust-related murder in all of Europe. Irena is one of the few who miraculously survived. Twice, in Lithuania’s darkest hours, she was allowed to flee but chose not to.”

Žickytė met Veisaite for the first time seven years ago, and they became friends despite their 52-year age gap: “I was inspired by her unbreakable spirit and exceptional humanity. [...] I started developing the idea of this film a few years ago. I have chosen an observational method to tell Irena’s story – to follow her in the present moment and reveal her story through everyday situations. It’s fair to say that I was learning from her through my film camera. But the pandemic broke out, and I was not able to continue filming, and then the pandemic took her from us… This was, and still is, deeply painful. Consequently, the material we shot during the development stage and at the beginning of the production has become very precious. The captured footage is a testimony of the last few years of this exceptional woman’s life, [and the gap] will be filled with archive materials.

“This film is going to be my farewell letter to Irena – to the woman who made a huge impact on me with her empathy, intelligence, humanism, commitment to understanding the other, and her vigorously open mind. I miss Irena, especially today, when war has returned to Europe. Everything Irena worried about is now bound to come true. Physically, she is not with us any more, but can her wisdom still guide us and help us survive these burdensome times?”

During its development, the project was presented at the DOK Leipzig Co-Pro Market, where it received the Current Time Award (see the news). It has also been selected for the Gap-Financing Market at this year’s Venice Production Bridge (see the news). Confirmed crew members include DoP Eitvydas Doškus (Feature Film About Life [+see also:
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interview: Dovile Sarutyte
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interview: Sharunas Bartas
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Für Irena is being produced by Giedrė Žickytė for Lithuania’s Moonmakers, in co-production with Pille Rünk, of Estonia’s Allfilm, and Martichka Bozhilova, of Bulgaria’s Agitprop. It received support from the Lithuanian Film Centre, Eurimages, the European Union’s MEDIA programme, the Estonian Film Institute, the Bulgarian National Film Center, the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Vilnius’ Goethe-Institut as well as Baltic pubcasters LRT and ERR. Its release is slated for 2023.