Marija Kavtaradze

Marija Kavtaradze graduated from the Academy of Music and Theater in Vilnius with a BA in directing. Since 2010, she has been making films and writing screenplays. From the start of her career, she was recognized and appreciated by the Lithuanian film community. Her short films *The Last Man* (2011) and *I Am in My Twenties* (2015) earned Silver Crane Eggs for best student work. Kavtaradze, along with director Andrius Blaževičius and her sister Tekle Kavtaradze, was awarded the Silver Crane for the script of the film *The Saint*.

Kavtaradze’s best-known film, *Summer Survivors*, was released in 2018. It opened the Toronto Film Festival in 2019 and received a special viewer award at the European Film Festival in Lecce, Italy. The film was named Best Baltic Film at the Tallinn Film Festival and won the Young Jury Prize at Tofifest Festival in Poland in 2019. It was also voted the best Lithuanian film at the Film Spring Awards.