Biography

Justina Mitkute is an experimental filmmaker from Lithuania with a focus on documentary filmmaking. She pursued her master's degree from Newcastle University in the United Kingdom and is now working on her doctoral work in filmmaking. Her directorial works are deeply humanistic and appeal to the various pressing social issues at hand. Her directorial debut, Byker Community (2019), speaks volumes about food wastage and focuses on a small community that helps produce nutritious meals from ingredients that would otherwise have gone to landfills. This work was selected and screened at Sunderland Shorts in 2019. Her next venture, Connection (2019), speaks about the rights of animals through the eyes of an animal rights activist. Her latest offering, Dive (2019), is an experimental film that delves deep into the thought processes of ten individuals through paintings created by them. This film uses stop-motion animation, unscripted narratives and close-up shots to show the body language and moods of these people. Moreover, Justina has created several installations including Future 4 (showing the futuristic versions of a location), Rats (narrating the lives of rats) and Plastic & Jellyfish (pointing out how aquatic life is affected due to the incessant plastic pollution). Justina's film career started with her being trained as an actress. She worked on several small and big projects including theatre, plays, radio dramas, short films and web series. She also performed minor roles in HBO's Chernobyl and BBC's War and Peace.