Lithuanian director Andrius Blaževičius presents his third feature film, How to Divorce During the War, in the official section of the Lecce European Film Festival, Lithuania’s candidate for the 2027 Oscars. The film narrates how Marija announces to her husband Vytas her divorce in Vilnius in February 2022, just the day before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, intertwining the marital crisis with the outbreak of the conflict.
From the Sundance award to the race for the Ulivo d Oro 🏆
The film won the award for best directing in the World Cinema Dramatic section of the 2026 Sundance Festival, an endorsement that comes before its stop in Lecce. Blaževičius avoids explicit political drama and bets on the everyday contradictions of characters who fail to govern their small defeats while history imposes another hierarchy of pain. The result turns domestic intimacy into an observatory of collective fractures, with editing that alternates the routine of the home and the echoes of the conflict.
Divorcing before the evening news, quite a Lithuanian specialty 📺
Marija chooses the worst possible moment to ask for a divorce, just when the world is preparing for another crisis. The film shows that organizing a separation while the international alarm sounds requires a composure that many diplomats would envy. If the Ulivo d Oro doesn’t come, there is always the consolation that in Vilnius no one will be able to say that the couple wasn’t aware of current events.