Jonava is the ninth largest city in Lithuania with a population of c. 30,000. It is located in Kaunas County in central Lithuania, 30 km (19 mi) north east of Kaunas, the second-largest city in Lithuania. It is served by Kaunas International Airport. Achema, the largest fertilizer factory in the Baltic states, is located nearby. The city is sometimes called "the capital of midsummer holiday".
Vytautas Andrius Graičiūnas was a Lithuanian American management theorist, management consultant, and engineer, and was a known expert in his field. Born to Lithuanian immigrants, he studied at the University of Chicago. During World War I he served in France. After coming back in 1919, he became interested in management and continued his studies at the Illinois Institute of Technology.
Unė Babickaitė-Graičiūnienė was a Lithuanian actress and theater director. During World War I, she attended the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. After the war, she staged several plays in Lithuania, but they were not well received by the critics. She then moved to the United States and appeared in several silent films. In 1924, she married Vytautas Andrius Graičiūnas. With his financial support, she organized theater plays in Paris and London. Babickaitė returned to Lithuania in 1936. After World War II, she was sentenced to five years in a Gulag.
Films have been made in Lithuania since the early twentieth century.
Isobel Dorothy Powley is an English actress. Born and raised in London, Powley was educated at Holland Park School. She began acting as a teenager on television, starring on the CBBC action television series M.I. High (2007–2008).
East-East is a multiplex architectural event jointly held by the Lithuanian and Japanese architects and students of architecture.
Carl Martin Gunnar Wallström Milkéwitz is a Swedish television and film actor. A successful actor in his home country, he is best known internationally for his 2015 American debut role as Tyrell Wellick in the USA Network cyber-thriller Mr. Robot.
Ruta Sepetys is a Lithuanian-American writer of historical fiction. As an author, she is a New York Times and international bestseller and winner of the Carnegie Medal and The Josette Frank Award for Fiction.
Between Shades of Gray, a New York Times Best Seller, is the debut novel of Lithuanian-American novelist Ruta Sepetys. It follows the Stalinist repressions of the mid-20th century and follows the life of a teenage girl Lina as she is deported from her native Lithuania with her mother and younger brother, and the journey they take to a Gulag labor camp in Siberia. It was nominated for the 2012 CILIP Carnegie Medal and has been translated into more than 27 languages.
The case of Drąsius Kedys is a high-profile criminal case in Lithuania centering on allegations of sexual molestation of a then four-year-old Lithuanian girl and a double homicide. In November 2008, Drąsius Kedys accused Laimutė Stankūnaitė of allowing Jonas Furmanavičius and Andrius Ūsas to sexually molest their underage daughter. Frustrated by lack of progress in the investigation, Kedys took the case public. He published a video with his daughter's testimony, sent out DVDs to politicians, and appeared in the media. Still no case was brought before trial. In October 2009, Jonas Furmanavičius, a district judge and accused pedophile, and Violeta Naruševičienė, aunt of his daughter and accused procurer, were found dead and Kedys became the main murder suspect. While Kedys went into hiding, some of the Lithuanian public sided with him, portraying Kedys as a desperate father trying to protect his daughter against pedophiles. In April 2010 his body was found near Kaunas Reservoir. His death was ruled an accident – choking on vomit after heavy drinking. The main suspect in the pedophilia case, Andrius Ūsas, was found drowned in a lake after a motorcycle accident in June 2010. In a posthumous trial Ūsas was found innocent. A separate court ruling restored the girl's custody to Stankūnaitė. Some Lithuanians disagreed with the ruling and began a vigil at the house of Kedys' relatives in Garliava, where the girl lived at the time. Officials were able to take custody of the girl with the help of riot police in May 2012. The Way of Courage, a political party founded by Kedys' sister and supporters, participated in the 2012 Lithuanian parliamentary election and received almost 8% of the votes.
Elena Spirgevičiūtė was a Lithuanian student. She was shot and killed by Soviet partisans for resisting rape. One of the four men, Alfonsas Čeponis was posthumously recognized as the Hero of the Soviet Union. She was a devoted Catholic and is recognized as a Servant of God. Her beatification case was initiated by the Archdiocese of Kaunas in 2000.
The Vilnius International Film Festival (VIFF) Kino pavasaris is a film festival held annually in March in Vilnius, Lithuania since 1995, and is the largest film festival in the nation in number of films and audience. It is one of the most anticipated annual cultural events in Lithuania.
The Summer of Sangailė is a 2015 romantic teen drama film written and directed by Alantė Kavaitė. It was screened in the Panorama section of the 65th Berlin International Film Festival. The film won the directing award in the dramatic world cinema category at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. It also won Best Film, Best Actress and best set design at the Silver Crane Awards. The film was selected as the Lithuanian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 88th Academy Awards but it was not nominated.
Aistė Diržiūtė is a Lithuanian actress best known for her role as Austė in The Summer of Sangaile.
Carrie Pilby is a 2016 American comedy-drama film directed by Susan Johnson and written by Kara Holden and Dean Craig, based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Caren Lissner. The film stars Bel Powley, Nathan Lane, Gabriel Byrne, Jason Ritter, William Moseley, Vanessa Bayer, and Colin O'Donoghue. Principal photography began on December 14, 2015, in New York City.
Petronėlė Lastienė née Sirutytė was a Lithuanian teacher and university professor. She was recognized as one of the Righteous Among the Nations for rescuing Jewish children from the Kaunas Ghetto during the Holocaust.
Basketball is the most popular sport in Lithuania. During public opinion polls in Lithuania, the Lithuanians regularly describe basketball as their priority interest sport. A research in 2015 indicated that nearly 41% of all population in Lithuania watched the EuroBasket 2015 final between Lithuania and Spain and it became the most watched event of the 21st century in Lithuania. The popularity of basketball among Lithuanians led to it being nicknamed as the "second religion" in Lithuania.
Wildling is a 2018 American horror fantasy film written and directed by Fritz Böhm in his feature directorial debut, from a screenplay by Böhm and Florian Eder. It stars Liv Tyler, Bel Powley, Brad Dourif, Collin Kelly-Sordelet, Mike Faist, and James LeGros. The film follows a teenage girl who uncovers a dark secret behind her traumatic childhood in the fictional Onatah County.
Jonah Andre Hauer-King is an English actor. He began acting while studying at St John's College, Cambridge. He is best known for playing Prince Eric in Disney's musical fantasy film The Little Mermaid (2023). He has appeared in the television series Howards End (2017), Little Women (2017), and World on Fire (2019–2023), and in the films The Last Photograph (2017) and A Dog's Way Home (2019).
Juozas Barzda-Bradauskas was a Lithuanian brigadier general. He was born in Maniškiai, Babtai County.
