BBC’s War and Peace, HBO’s Chernobyl, Netflix’s Stranger Things and now Camelot Films’ Prizefighter: The Life of Jem Belcher. More and more international producers are choosing Lithuania as their shooting location, benefiting as well as challenging the small Baltic nation’s film industry.
The UK-based Prizefighter: The Life of Jem Belcher chose to relocate to Lithuania earlier this year, after the film’s Welsh financing fell through, according to the entertainment magazine Variety.
In the words of the Prizefighter’s executive producer Kestutis Drazdauskas, the biggest challenge while shooting Daniel Graham’s period drama in Lithuania was re-creating 19th century England in today’s Vilnius.
“It was an extensive set construction for us because locations for us are minimal that could play as that period in England and Wales,” Drazdauskas, head of the production company Artbox, said.
Time was of the essence for the 36-day shoot, but local crews were quick to respond, with set dressing and skillfully deployed props allowing the production to recreate the look and feel of Victorian England.
In the words of Drazdauskas, this is thanks to a “small but very efficient film industry” in Lithuania. The country is attractive because it offers a 30-% tax credit, which has a minimum spend of just 43,000 euros.
But next to the financial benefits, foreign producers are also drawn to Lithuania due to its “evocative landscapes – ancient forests, rolling dunes, freshwater lakes, and historical sites” that “can facilitate a wide range of stories”.
The Lithuanian capital Vilnius “is very rich in terms of different bits of architecture, different bits of history”, Jonas Spokas of Baltic Locations said.
The city has doubled as Stockholm for Netflix’s Young Wallander and St. Petersburg for the Nent Group’s drama series With One Eye Open.
“We’ve also done Germany, London, and Paris,” Spokas added. (LRT/Business World Magazine)
