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16-11-2018

Lithuanian Moonmakers with Two Films in Post-production

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    VILNIUS: Moonmakers producer/director Giedre Zickyte, who participated in Emerging Producers at the recent Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival, is completing her film The Jump, a Lithuanian/Latvian/French/US coproduction, at the end of December 2018. She is also producing a second film, the Lithuanian/Estonian coproduction Gentle Warriors directed by Marija Stonyte, which has moved into post-production for completion at the end of 2019.

    The Jump is produced by Moonmakers, and coproduced by Uldis Cekulis for Latvia’s VFS Films, along with France’s Faites un Voeu and the U.S. company Naked Edge Films. The film has been picked up by UK sales agent Met Films.

    The film is the story of a Lithuanian sailor, who made a 10-foot jump from a Soviet fishing boat onto a U.S. Coast Guard ship in pursuit of freedom.

    The film has a budget of 535,000 EUR. It received a grant of 20,000 EUR from the Lithuanian Film Centre through a special 100th anniversary programme of grants in January 2018 and 103,500 EUR in development and production funding from the Lithuanian Film Centre and 41,000 coming from the National Film Centre of Latvia, along with funding from France’s CNC, support from Lithuanian State TV and both development and production funding from MEDIA.

    Gentle Warriors is a Lithuanian/Estonian documentary coproduced with Vesilind about five young women, who become warriors in the military and in their own lives. The 160,000 EUR film is benefiting from the tax incentives and has received 77,000 EUR from the Lithuanian Film Centre and 26,000 coming from Estonia from the Estonian Film Institute and Cultural Endowment of Estonia. Zickyte told FNE that the production will be completed by the end of 2019. The film is planned as an 80-minute feature. International sales is handled by France’s CAT&Docs. The film won two awards at the 2018 Meeting Point Vilnius pitching event and was the winning project at the Edinburgh Pitch.