January 26 / 2012
Lithuanian basketball film premiere picks up America’s plaudits
As every year, a tiny American town surrounded by snow-capped Rockies brought together the independent film elite for the Sundance festival. Neither Šarunas Marčiulionis nor Arturas Karnišovas could hide the onset of emotions, when the Sundance audience burst in standing ovations for the Saturday premier of "The other dream team", a documentary about the road of the Lithuanian basketball team to the 1992 Olympic bronze.
It was a long-awaited day for the world to see that there was more than one dream team.
The other one had been craved for by the Lithuanians for about fifty years of occupation.
In the Olympics, Lithuania appeared again as an independent state, and the athletes snatched the bronze, emerging victorious in their fight against the team consisting of the players from the former Soviet Union republics.
“There is no better place than Sundance for the premiere – it is like the U.S. Cannes. Our goal had always been to let the world know our history, we in Lithuania already know it ", – said Marius Markevičius, director of “The other dream team".
It shows how the four star athletes – Arvydas Sabonis, Šarūnas Marčiulionis, Rimas Kurtinaitis and Valdemaras Chomičius – made it from Soviet-time courtyards, where they grew up, to the world basketball arenas.
To be selected for the Sundance festival programme already means something, as the commission received 4042 applications with feature and documentary films, selecting but 58 to compete.
It is expected that “The other dream team " will catch attention of international film distributors. The Independent Film Festival Sundance is a first step to promote the film.
Other festivals, like Santa Barbara, Berlin, Tribeca, South by Southwest, will follow. “We very much hope that the film makes its way on the screens before the London Olympics",– said J. Weinbach.
"The other dream team" will be shown five times in the Sundance festival in Utah.
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