Handlung

Radio Free Europe, BBC, and Voice of America can only rarely get through the Iron Curtain and Soviet mufflers to Lithuania, a country torn by a war between the local resistance movement and the Soviet regime that is forced onto Lithuanian people by bayonets of the Russian army. Everybody who tries to resist the Soviet rule is either terrorized or executed or exiled to Siberia. He is one of the local high-school students who witness the local armed resistance to the Soviet regime and ultimately decide to join it by taking a gun into their hands. He collects documents and all possible kinds of evidence that prove daunting crimes of the Kremlin. He soon becomes a legend among his peers. To girls, he is John Wayne the Hollywood Icon. Guys see him as an insurmountable obstacle and an invincible rival in matters of love. He is destined to take part at the historical March to the West and inform the US Congress of the Baltic States' struggle for freedom, which subsequently leads to the Welles Declaration. The latter drives a wedge between two former allies, the USA and the USSR, and keeps the hope for independence alive in the three Baltic States under the Soviet occupation during the long years of the entire Cold War. "Owl Mountain" is a full lenght feature historical drama about the political and social issues of Lithuania in 1947-1952 m. which reflect most of Soviet occupied countries' life. It's about the journey of committed partisans and the message they carry out, about devotion and bloody fight, internecine relationships, love and hate, postwar generation, fear to die but not strong enough to defeat the aim for independence. That's the story of hope which is symbolized by the Voice of America. Story of reckless risk, survival, unity, and here the Jewish are stated as the best example of encouragement. Story of friendship, also with the different cultures but same destinies, such as hiding Germans. That's the story about sacrifice for freedom, for national, social and finally simple human happiness.

The war seems about to be over. The war that is only beginning... Radio Free Europe, BBC, and Voice of America can only rarely get through the Iron Curtain and Soviet mufflers to Lithuania, a country torn by a war between the local resistance movement and the Soviet regime that is forced onto Lithuanian people by bayonets of the Russian army. Everybody who tries to resist the Soviet rule is either terrorized or executed or exiled to Siberia. Before the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s gave us the words for it, 'ethnic cleansing' had been practiced on an enormous scale by the Soviet Union. Particularly badly affected was Soviet occupied Lithuania, where between the end of World War II and the final withdrawal of Soviet troops in 1992, some 300,000 men, women and children, were deported, killed or driven into exile. 'Owl Mountain' follows a group of classmates as they come to terms with adulthood, the Soviet occupation and the risk of deportation. As they meet to romance, play and party at Owl Mountain Park, the shadow thrown by the Soviet occupation grows across their lives, and they all must make fateful decisions as to how they will come to terms with living in a country in fear. As the story moves to its conclusion the friends will experience love, sorrow, death, betrayal and deportation. But at the end they will perhaps find hope for a brighter tomorrow. And strength to take part at the historical March to the West and inform the US Congress of the struggle for freedom, which subsequently leads to the Welles Declaration that supported idea for independence alive in the three Baltic States under the Soviet occupation during the long years of the entire Cold War.