Locarno International Film Festival 2024, Vancouver International Film Festival 2024, Chicago International Film Festival 2024
Golden Leopard, and Swatch First Feature Award, Ecumenical Jury Prize, Locarno International Film Festival 2024
Abandoned by her mother, thirteen-year-old Marija has trouble fitting into the gray industrial town where she now lives with her grandmother. She begins to form a tentative and volatile bond with rebellious peer Kristina, and the two enroll in a local modeling school that promises its pupils the chance of a glamorous life far away from their bleak and isolated existence. But the financial and physical demands of the school force them to come up with increasingly extreme and dangerous ways to conform their young bodies to impossible standards of beauty. An aptly titled coming-of-age tale set amidst contaminated physical and social landscapes, Toxic has at its centre an exploration of the human body in all its frailty and glory.
Film director and screenwriter Saulė Bliuvaitė graduated from the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre’s Film Directing program in 2018. Her short film Limousine (2021) received the Best Short Documentary award at the Warsaw Film Festival. Saule is also the co-writer and co-editor of the historical drama Isaac, nominated for a FIPRESCI prize at the 2020 European Film Awards. Toxic is her debut feature.
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