After spending the entire year preparing for the 25th-anniversary edition of their event, organisers of the Vilnius International Film Festival (Vilnius IFF) had less than a week to move their event from cinemas to streaming platforms.
With all mass gatherings banned by the government to prevent the spread of coronavirus, the team quickly adapted and accomplished what seemed like an impossible task – going fully digital. The story of their success has captivated the interest of many other festivals that may be facing similar challenges in the near future, as the pandemic continues to affect cultural events all over the world.
After learning about the ban on public gathering in Lithuania and the announcement of a state-wide quarantine in mid-March, the festival team had to quickly reorganise their tasks, create new sponsorship, communication and marketing strategies, make arrangements with film distributors for on-demand viewing, partner with streaming platforms, solve technical difficulties, refund tickets and answer an influx of viewer inquiries. In the end, the Vilnius IFF, which ran from March 19 to April 2nd, became one of the first film festivals to switch to a digital format.
In total, 69% of the programme – 118 films – made it onto streaming sites and on-demand TV. The European Debut and Short Film competitions also took place, with international juries choosing the winners online. Winners are set to receive cash prizes and award statuettes.
Other key parts of the festival were also preserved, including live interviews with filmmakers, open discussions about films, and presentations by festival programmers, all of which received 750,000 views online. Plus, the festival’s photographers improvised a mini red carpet photoshoot, using photos sent in by people celebrating the awards ceremony at home.
The Vilnius International Film Festival also supported movie theatres by broadcasting the awards ceremony from an empty cinema and playing the closing film in vacant movie theatres across the country.
The festival is one of the examples of the kind of resilience Vilnius is exhibiting amid pandemic-related restrictions. Volunteers have signed up to support the medical community, seniors and others, while businesses donated funds and delivered food to doctors. A Vilnius-based photographer, Adas Vasiliauskas, even started a series of playful photos he called ‘Portraits of the Quarantine’, which went viral around the world.
In the past few years, the capital of Lithuania has put itself on the map of the global movie industry by becoming a filming location for some globally-acclaimed film projects, including the Emmy-winning hit series Chernobyl. At the beginning of this year, part of the new season of the popular American TV series „Stranger Things“ was shot in Vilnius and surrounding areas.