Interview with Austeja Urbaitė on Remember to Blink
"I call this emotional blindness."
Austėja Urbaitė is a Lithuanian film director. Born in 1991, she grew up near the Baltic nation’s Vilnius. She studied Film Direction at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre. Austeja’s debut feature Remember to Blink is “a multilayered and clever psychodrama packed with an explosion of emotions”. It premiered at the 26th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (click here in order to read our review of the film, written back then).
Remember to Blink has been selected to the 10th edition of the ArteKino online film festival, and it is available to stream for free during the entire month of December 2025.
Click here in order to watch Remember to Blink now.
Joshua Polanski – Please tell us about the genesis of Remember to Blink?
Austeja Urbaitė – This movie is a hybrid of stories experienced by me, told by others and imagined. I have worked with kids my whole life and my first encounters with kids in the orphanages as well witnessing of adoption stories woke me up to a wider view of life, meaning of family and child identity.
JP – Language and renaming play a key part in the power dynamics of adoption as depicted in Remember to Blink - a system that is far from the rosy-lensed narrative of salvation that is often depicted in more happy and simple studio films like The Blind Side [John Lee Hancock, 2010]. Is adoption a subject matter close to home? How did it end up inside your circle of compassion?
AU – Sometimes the right thing to do (the salvation) can feel really wrong to us (our personal experience/view of life). In reality we judge so easily every situation, often without stopping to question our personal perspectives. I call this emotional blindness (hence the title). I have spend few ears working as a theatre facilitator in an orphanage and I have been much influenced by these children. Some of them had adoptive families in Italy, that they would visit during summers. They also had friends already adopted there sending them letters about their lives, joy and sadness.
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