Filmmaker Laurynas Bareiša draws a film story based on a condition and trauma from a personal experience, in his sophomore film DROWNING DRY; playing in four screenings at the 40th Santa Barbara International Film Festival

By Oliver Carnay

One of the rising directors to watch out —  Lithuanian filmmaker Laurynas Bareiša (PILGRIMS) sophomore feature DROWNING DRY won awards for Best Director and a shared Best Performance prize for the four lead actors (Best Performance Ensemble Award) at the recent Locarno Film Festival. It also won the following awards:
 
Jury Special Mention – Riga International Film Festival
Best Film, Rampa Award – Seville European Film Festival
Best Baltic Director Award – Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival
Best Screenplay Award – Festival de Cinema Europeo Lecce
Best Actor Award (for Paulius Markevičius) – Festival de Cinema Europeo Lecce
 
The film is playing four screenings at the ongoing 40th Santa Barbara International Film Festival.  For tickets, please go to www.sbiff.org. Schedule of screenings are as follows:
 
Thursday 2/6, 12:00PM – Riviera Theatre 
Friday 2/7, 2:40PM – Film Center Auditorium 3
Saturday 2/8, 9:00PM – Film Center Auditorium 4
 
Dry drowning or secondary drowning is a rare drowning complication that happens if water gets into the lungs.  Small amount of water can irritate the lungs’ lining and fluid can build up, causing a condition called pulmonary edema.  
 
In creating his film, he used the above condition as a plot device in his movie, but also the basis for the whole structure of the story.  The concept of this perverse iteration of escaping drowning in the water and then experiencing drowning on dry land connected with him personally.  A couple of years ago, he had to resuscitate his two year old son and it gave him increased anxiety and panic attacks.  The whole incident could not have taken more than one minute even though the sign he remembers best is the blue stiff face of his kid.  Fortunately, everything ended well and with no further complications.  In reaction to the incident, he has created four main adult characters that served in the film “Drowning Dry.”
 
In the film, to celebrate Lukas’ (Paulius Markevicius) victory at the martial arts tournament and Tomas’ (Giedrius Kiela) birthday party, their two wives who are sisters Juste (Agne Kaktaite) and Ernesta (Gelmine Glemzaite) organize a weekend party at the charming country estate of their youth. With their kids Kristafus (Herkus Sarapas) and Urte (Olivija Eva Viliüné), the two sisters reconnect, dance and discuss family finances, their marital relationships hang in the balance, with their knuckleheaded husbands are clueless how to meet their needs. But after a near tragic accident of one of the children, their lives will change forever.  Told in segments, the film jumps back and forth through time, delicately revealing just what happened on that fateful summer day. 
 
The film essentially is about a group of people dealing with an almost tragic event that causes them to experience emotional trauma in different ways. Bareiša used irregular repetition borrowed from dry drowning conditions as a structural element of the story in order to highlight the various ways of receiving and dealing with trauma.  It helped him organically merge the story, subject and the theme into one.
 
Repetition or doubling, as most cases in the film are repeated twice, accentuates different emotional aspects of the events.  Like for example in the opening where there is a fight scene connected to the spar scene, or the dinner with organ recipient and a recollection of it between the sisters. In the last instance it should help create an uncanny feeling that something is the same, but different which sometimes follows a person after trauma.
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