Lithuania, 1992. A dark winter morning. Crowds of people are squeezing into overcrowded trolleybuses; others are standing in long queues outside shops. Just a few hours later, the streets suddenly become empty, cashiers evaporate from the shops. What happened? The same sounds are coming from every corner, everyone is glued to their small TV screens, watching the hugely popular Mexican telenovela The Rich Also Cry.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Mexican telenovelas began to appear on television and became an unexpected form of therapy for Lithuanian women, bringing hope and courage throughout the chaos of the early 1990s. The Poor Cry Too looks at the changes in the personal worlds of women of various generations at that time. The film crew, alongside the protagonists of the film, even reach Mexico, where they meet Veronica Castro who played Mariana, the lead character of the TV series The Rich Also Cry. Together, the women reflect on the impact of telenovelas, now a distant but still vivid memory, on their lives.
Production: Just a moment. Producer: Dagnė Vildžiūnaitė.
Bios
Viktorija Mickutė is a journalist and documentary filmmaker who has received three Emmy nominations. Viktorija’s project Still Here (Vis dar čia) on mass incarceration and gentrification in the USA was featured at the Sundance Film Festival in 2020. Since 2017, Viktorija has been making immersive interactive documentaries for Al Jazeera news network’s media innovation studio AJ Contrast, where she holds the position of Senior Producer. Viktorija’s work has won 37 international awards, including Amnesty Media and numerous Drum Online Media awards. Her films and projects have been screened at numerous festivals, including the Sheffield Documentary and One World film festivals. Born and raised in Lithuania, Viktorija has been awarded a Fulbright scholarship and holds a Master’s degree in Journalism from the University of Missouri, USA. In 2022, she was selected to participate in the Lithuanian Internet Media Association’s Women’s Leadership Programme. In the spring of 2023, Viktorija was selected to participate in the Mercury Store theatre directing programme in Brooklyn. In June, she directed a play at the Wooster Group’s Performing Garage in Soho, NYC.
Ieva Balsiūnaitė is a journalist and documentary filmmaker based in Vilnius. Her previous projects include the documentary The Snowball Rolled South (Riedėjo gniūžtė į pietus), which explores the relationship that Litvaks in the South African Republic have with Lithuania. Other notable projects include a radio documentary on women in the Ukrainian army (2022) and a documentary about everyday life in the dark and cold as Russia was attacking the country’s energy infrastructure. In 2022, Ieva’s radio documentary on Belarusian activists living in Lithuania won 1st prize at the prestigious Czech radio festival Prix Bohemia Radio. Currently, Ieva works as a foreign news editor, journalist and presenter of special broadcasts at the Lithuanian National Radio and Television (LRT), where she continues her multi-format work focusing on international events, human rights and socio-political topics.