Lithuanian screen and theater legend Juozas Budraitis, who has been dubbed “the James Dean of the Baltics,” will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 29th edition of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (PÖFF), organizers unveiled on Friday.
Active since 1966, the 85-year-old Budraitis has appeared in more than 120 film and television roles – “from revolutionaries to kings, including notable performances in Estonian cinema,” the fest highlighted. Among other roles, he starred in the Soviet production Wounded Game, which screened at the 1977 Cannes Film Festival, and had a small part as an old chess player towards the end of the final episode of the Anya Taylor-Joy-starring Netflix miniseries The Queen’s Gambit.
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In a tribute to Budraitis, the Tallinn fest will screen Nerijus Milerius’ biographical documentary Old Man’s Journeys, “a portrait of Baltic film and theater icon Juozas Budraitis, revisiting his roles, places and friends, on and off screen,” and Mantas Verbiejus’ Sand in Your Hair. “As time slips away, two aging hearts escape society’s limits, finding freedom and love in the time they have left,” reads a synopsis of the movie. “Maestro Juozas Budraitis plays a memorable supporting role alongside two other Lithuanian icons: Jūratė Onaitytė and Liubomiras Laucevičius.”
A summary of Old Man’s Journeys on the Tallinn fest website shows the respect the actor receives. “Maestro Juozas Budraitis recently celebrated his 85th birthday, yet he still seems to be only 58,” it reads. “The beloved and vibrant actor journeys through memories, feelings, secrets, traumas and observations, from his childhood in Klaipėda to his lovely encounter with Slovak actress Zuzana Kocúriková in Bratislava, where he learnt Czech in 1968.”
And it highlights: “Filmmaker and philosopher Nerijus Milerius (Johatsu, Exemplary Behaviour) follows the restless actor as he travels by car, train, and plane. Juozas jokes that this film should never have been made, yet he wrote the title out by hand himself.”
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