Film “The Ancient Forest”, shot in Lithuanian woods, was selected to the famous documentary film festival in Amsterdam – IDFA

The crew of the creatively and technically extremely challenging film “The Ancient Forest”, which took four year to make, has received great news - their documentary film was selected for the IDFA festival in Amsterdam (Netherlands). IDFA is the world’s largest documentary film festival, held every November. In 2016, it attracted 276,000 visitors and 3,000 documentary film makers and professionals.

The film directed by Mindaugas Survila will bring the audience to the centuries-old Lithuanian woods, so close to the soul of every Lithuanian. “In Western Europe, the ancient forests are almost extinct, but in Lithuania we still have small patches of these unique forests”, – says director Mindaugas Survila, who has devoted four years of work to convey the unique primal experience of Lithuanian forest and human relationship with it. 

The previous work of the director, “The Field of Magic”, was one of the most touching documentaries in Lithuania, awarded with the “Silver Crane”, it also received recognition at film festivals in Canada, Australia, Brazil, Israel and other. For the new film, “The Ancient Forest”, the director and his crew were preparing (looking for heroes, making unique filming equipment) for about eight years, the film itself took four years to complete.

“Only in collaboration of the crew with diverse scientists and naturalists we managed to find the characters of the film “The Ancient Forest”, which were sometimes just a few in the territory of Lithuania. During the shooting, often we had to be stuck in tents for several hours in sub-zero temperatures, or stay during the summer without getting out of the tree for a few days at the high of 30 metres, waiting for a shot” – Mindaugas Survila shared about the process of making the film.

Film “The Ancient Forest” is unique in that many people from diverse backgrounds contributed to the creation of the film through crowdsourcing. These were: from regular film professionals (camera operators, film editors, etc.) to various metalworking specialists, mechanics experts, tailors, programmers, carpenters, divers, “sherpas”, IT specialists, and, of course, scientists from various fields (biology, history and physics). Creation of the film was financially supported not only by the Lithuanian Film Centre, but also by private companies and a large number of people who voluntarily gave their 2% of income tax for support or by transferring funds directly to the film’s account.