26/10/2012 - Algimantas Puipa's film is screened at the Luxembourg CinEast festival

Luxembourg's CinEast festival presented Algimantas Puipa's Fortress of the Sleeping Butterflies yesterday. The film, which is drawn from a novel by popular Lithuanian writer Jurga Ivanauskaite, investigates the main theme of most of Puipa's work, namely the meaning of life.

Four lives intertwine - those of a woman and three young girls, all of them looking for new beginnings. Monika, a middle-aged wealthy woman, is going through a marriage crisis with her younger husband Linas. After a strange turn of events, the woman meets Kristina, Egle and Gitana, who are ex-prostitutes extradited from Germany. The lady and the girls settle down in a country mansion, forming a relationship that will change them forever. As the plot moves forward, Puipa portrays every phase of a woman's life, each with its light and shadow.

From the very first scenes, the protagonist is seen as being in constant self-conflict, where her desire to be a mother collides with bridging the generational gap between the husband and her. When Linas tells Monika about his pregnant lover, she feels stranded and in need of shelter, just like the three young prostitutes. Puipa also highlights several social issues that are becoming ever more prevalent in Eastern Europe. Kristina, the youngest of the three girls, is sent by her own family to sell her body for money; Egle is a drug addict who is blackmailed by a pornographic film director; Gitana, who willingly chooses to become a prostitute, has a daughter who is the result of her being raped by her own father.

Monika's summer villa will be, as the title suggests, the fortress in which these four lost souls can awaken their inner butterfly and finally spread their wings to life.