PREMIERE In Passing + Q&A with Gailė Garnelytė, Artūras Morozovas and Akvilė Žilionytė-Khan

The national premiere of the film “n Passing” (dir. Gailė Garnelytė) will take place during the “Inconvenient Films” festival.

For more than a decade, Artūras Morozovas has been photographing people in vulnerable situations – those who suffer from the Russian occupation and its consequences, people affected by the war in Ukraine and those experiencing social isolation in Lithuania. He is dedicated to exploring social problems that the Soviet regime has caused to both countries.

In the film, we meet Rita, a mother of three children who lost her husband to suicide and has a disability; Danutė, who lives alone in a forest; soldiers Lisa and Jashka, brutally murdered by the Russians, as well as Ivan, whose home was recently destroyed by bombs. Despite Artūras’ desire to remain impartial and objective, a close bond forms between the photographer and his characters. This film, then, is about the miracle of human connection and hope.

The premiere screenings will take place on October 9th at the Skalvija cinema center, on October 11th at the Kaunas Ąžuolynas library (free of charge), and on October 19th at the Šiauliai Photography Museum (with a pay-what-you-want ticket).

Director Gailė Garnelytė graduated from the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre with a degree in film dramaturgy. She is a screenwriter for various short films, TV shows and series, and a script consultant for documentary films, including the IDFA award-winning best student film. She leads screenwriting workshops and mentors young creators. Gailė’s first short documentary film was screened at more than 30 festivals and won two awards for best short documentary film. She recently completed her debut feature-length documentary film, In Passing.

Artūras Morozovas is a Lithuanian documentary photographer and chairman of the Lithuanian Photographic Art Society. Since starting work as a photojournalist in 2006, he has covered various events in Lithuania and Europe and explored sensitive social issues: he has documented military conflicts in Sakartvelo, Ukraine, and post-conflict situations in Chechnya and Palestine, and captured the increased migration of refugees from Syria and other Arab countries to Europe. Although Morozov’s background in photography comes from the media field, he represents the Lithuanian tradition of humanistic photography, capturing life in Lithuania, with people in their everyday lives at its epicenter.

Akvilė Žilionytė-Khan is a creative producer who has been working in the film industry since 2014. She graduated with a degree in Lithuanian philology and film directing. In 2017, she founded the Artišokai studio, which actively produces contemporary art projects and films. Akvilė has produced more than ten short films, which have been screened at the Jihlava IDFF, the Drama Short Film Festival, the Hamburg Short Film Festival, the Vilnius Film Festival, and others. She is an alumna of the Eurodoc (2015) and ESoDoc (2020) programs and continues to improve her knowledge through international training courses. She is currently developing three feature films.