Director : Marius Markevicius
Year : 2012
The start of the documentary shows the life in the Soviet Union for the Lithuanian players as they are interviewed. It also shows how Basketball became a national sport in Lithuania and why it is a such a big deal in the small country.
I thought the documentary was very honest and showed the truth of how the Lithuanians lived in the 1990's and before that. The documentary seemed to not just show the Basketball but also the lives of the Lithuanians which I thought gave the film another dimension and showed the spectators the reality of life in the 1980's for Lithuanians.
The film had quite a simple but strong structure as the way it was showed the build up from the story behind the players to the final game in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics as Lithuania beat the broken up Soviet Union to win a bronze in there first Olympics as being an independent country.
The tools the film makers used where Archive Footage and Interviews which they had to go quite a big distance to get as they said in there interview at the Sundance Film Festival.
Interviews included not just from Lithuanians but also from the NBA comissionar and other big people in the Basketball history such as Golden State Warriors legend and team mate of Sarunas Marciulonis Chris Mullin.
The main people that were included were the main four players which played in the 5 players starting line up for the Soviet Union before the independence who were Arvydas Sabonis, Sarunas Marculionis, Rimas Kurtinaitis and Valdemaras Chomicius.
