Opening The Baltic Film Festival for 2014, is this incredible story of the 1992 Lithuanian basketball team, whose athletes struggled under Soviet rule. They became symbols of Lithuania’s independence movement, and – with help from the Grateful Dead – triumphed at the Barcelona Olympics.
Documenting the Lithuanians’ experiences behind the Iron Curtain, where elite athletes were subjected to the vagaries of Communist rule, the film also offers a look in the wider historical events of the time. As athletes smuggled VCRs on road trips and hid from KGB agents, Lithuania’s basketball stars always shared a common goal - to utilise their athletic gifts to help a nation bloom. With a mix of vérité scenes, incisive interviews and exclusive archival images culled from former Soviet archives, The Other Dream Team reveals how a special group of athletes journeyed through the bleak era of Communism to the rebirth of a nation and the re-discovery of their own free will. It is global basketball’s ultimate “long, strange trip”… with a very happy ending. Tix/more info
