Director Marija Kavtaradze’s film received an honorable international award Culture

European film festival network Moving Images – Open Borders, which also owns Scanorama, presented the award for the fourth consecutive year to support the new generation of European filmmakers. In this competition, Marija Kavtaradze’s film defeated 11 other works by emerging European directors with a distinct authorial character.

Members of the “Moving Images Without Borders” network annually nominate two first or second films by European directors presented at their festivals.

Directed by Marija Kavtardze, the film “You don’t remind me of anything” (English “Slow”) will be presented at all festivals of the network, visited by over 250,000 viewers a year, subtitled in French, German, Italian, Spanish, Serbian and actively promoted.

Photo by Christoph Leeb/The film’s main actors Greta Grinevičiūtė and Kęstutis Cicėnas during the presentation of the “New Vision Award” at the “Crossing Europe” festival in Linz

“The perfectly controlled romantic drama stood out with bold decisions and unexpected creative discoveries, looking for an unusual way of telling the audience. A promising director from a small country deserves more attention and support, so that she can continue to conquer our hearts with her films, helping to accept herself and others”, commented Guillaume, head and co-founder of the film festival “Les Arcs” in France, which nominated Maria Kavtaradze’s film for this award. Calop.

The winner was chosen by the art directors of the Linz Film Festival “Crossing Europe” in Austria, the Film Forum of European Countries “Scanorama”, the “Les Arcs” Film Festival in France, the Trieste Film Festival in Italy, the Cottbus Film Festival in Germany, the Seville Film Festival in Spain and the Palić Film Festival in Serbia.

“This award is intended to support bold directors with an original style, whose creative biographies are just starting to take off, but have a clear authorial voice. We are especially happy that Lithuania won this time. We have shown Marija Kavtaradze’s short films in Scanorama’s competition programs, so we are happy that the art directors of film festivals almost unanimously decided to give this award to her, when extremely strong and original films from all over Europe participated in the competition this year”, commented “Moving images – without Gražina Arlickaitė is the founder and art director of Scanorama, a film forum of European countries belonging to the network of film festivals.

The winner will also receive a monetary bonus of 3,000 euros. The main actors of the film, Greta Grinevičiūtė and Kęstutis Cicėnas, received the prize during the awards ceremony of the Linz film festival “Crossing Europe” in Austria on the evening of May 4.

Photo by Andriaus Aleksandravičius/Filming of “You don’t remind me of anything”.

“We are very happy with this award. The greatest gift to the creators is that the film will continue to travel and will be discovered by viewers in new countries. We got a warm reception from the audience – they seem to feel how much love and tenderness we put into making it. I try to maintain these qualities while directing each of my films, because it seems that this is exactly what many of us lack”, commented Marija Kavtaradze, the director of the film “You don’t remind me of anything”.

In the love drama “Tu man niko nepsimeni” (English “Slow”), modern dance dancer Elena meets Dovydas, a sign language interpreter, assigned to interpret for deaf young people in her classes. The connection between the two is sudden, dynamic, immediate, and despite the obstacles of everyday life, they get closer to each other – the platonic relationship turns into a romantic one. But as they intertwine more and more, it becomes more and more difficult to make sacrifices and find compromises – each is forced to find the limits of his generosity to the other.

Stop frame/Marija Kavtaradze’s film “You don’t remind me of anything”

The world premiere of M. Kavtaradze’s film took place at the beginning of 2023 at the Sundance International Film Festival. Here he won an award for directing.

The premiere of the film in Lithuania took place in September last year.