Viewed as part of Virtual Sundance Film Festival 2026

There’s never an optimal time to make tough decisions affecting one’s personal destiny, and for the female protagonist in the Lithuanian film How to Divorce During the War (B+) directed by Andrius Blaževičius, separating from her partner on the eve before the Russian invasion of Ukraine is just the beginning. Žygimantė Elena Jakštaitė stars as steely corporate breadwinner Marija opposite Marius Repšys as faux-hipster homemaker husband Vytas, and the crumbling couple shares a precocious pre-teen daughter Dovilė, convincingly played by Amelija Adomaitytė. Set in Vilnius in 2022 in the Baltic state adjacent to a simmering war territory, the characters occupy a clinical and sometimes lightly satirical world as they maneuver through complacency about shifts to the status quo and soul search to be properly performative about life in flux on both domestic and geopolitical fronts. Jakštaitė is particularly effective, from an iconic early sequence told almost entirely through a windshield to her fluid interactions with corporate colleagues, refugees and even her own rebellious offspring. The elegant, classical composition of sequences by cinematographer Narvydas Naujalis against unsettling and insistent music by Jakub Rataj places the players in this ensemble as fascinating pawns in a zone of interest. Examining both the propaganda and realities of politics and war in their extended families tightens the psychological lens. From home life and corporate settings to the art scene and schoolyards where protests large and small start conjuring, a meditation on messiness plays out in interesting ways, even though the film feels like a pilot episode of an even more interesting plot to come. While those next milestones don’t fully manifest within the boundaries of this movie, its makers provoke a deep sense of introspection and conversation about identity in an interconnected world.