Nijolė Valadkevičiūtė
The artist and animated film director Nijolė Valadkevičiūtė (1944) graduated from the LSSR State Art Institute in 1970. She graduated from the Postgraduate School of Scriptwriters and Film Directors in Moscow with a diploma in animation film directing in 1983. Her graduation work Medis (The Tree) was the first professional animated film to be made in the Lithuanian Film Studios.
Her later work was driven by exploration and unusual experiments. With each new film, her animation took on a more expressive hue, and conveyed abstract ideas, such as hope, expectation and anxiety. Drastic graphic solutions began to dominate in her work, which freed itself from traditional plotlines.
Her animated film Mįslė (The Riddle) was awarded a prize at the 18th All-Union Film Festival in Minsk in Belarus, while Rytoj, 11 val. ryto (Tomorrow at 11am, 1985) won prizes at the 19th All-Union Film Festival in Alma-Ata in Kazakhstan. Her Sezamai, atsiverk (Open Sesame, 2001) won an Audience Award at the Visonaria International Film Festival in Siena in Italy. Her animation films Edeno sodas (The Garden of Eden, 2007), Prezidentas (The President, 2009) and Lietuvių vardas (The Lithuanian Name, 2010) all received nominations at the National Silver Crane Film and Television Awards.