How to Divorce During the War

A collapsing marriage collides with geopolitical catastrophe to breathtaking effect in this satirical, Sundance-awarded exploration of identity and hypocrisy.

It’s 2022. In Vilnius, Lithuania, successful executive and breadwinner Marija tells her unemployed filmmaker husband Vytas she wants a divorce. He’s blindsided; she’s resolute. Tomorrow, they’ll inform their daughter. But they wake the next morning to the news that Russia has invaded Ukraine, and their private crisis is suddenly enveloped by a much larger political one. As Marija evicts Vytas in favour of a refugee family and Vytas moves back in with his Russophile parents, the former couple must navigate their new individualities – are they good people? What do they stand for? – as they simultaneously reckon with their country’s compounding existential dread.

Andrius Blaževičius’s wry film offers a masterclass in visual storytelling: it’s little wonder he walked away from Sundance with the World Cinema Dramatic section’s Directing Award. With precision, he threads the tension between comfort and conflict through every strand of the story’s DNA, continually testing Vytas’s and Marija’s moral convictions. Marius Repšys’s and Žygimantė Elena Jakštaitė’s outstanding performances underscore the ironies of their actions, while the deadpan script, off-kilter score and coolly detached cinematography combine to solidify a sense of growing unease that makes How to Divorce During the War both timely and universally resonant.

Content: Melbourne International Film Festival