Audrius Stonys, born in 1966 in Vilnius, Lithuania, is one of the most important figures in contemporary Lithuanian documentary cinema. A member of both the European Documentary Network and the European Film Academy, he began his creative work in the final years of the Soviet period and has since developed a distinctive body of work as an independent filmmaker and producer.
Stonys has directed more than twenty films, many of which have received major international recognition. His documentaries have been awarded prizes at festivals in Nyon, Split, Bornholm, Győr, Neubrandenburg, Barcelona, Florence, Krakow, Oberhausen, and San Francisco. In 1992, his film *Earth of the Blind* received the European Film Academy Award for Best European Documentary Film of the Year, marking a defining moment in his career. In 2002, he was awarded the Lithuanian National Prize for Culture and Arts.
Alongside his filmmaking, Stonys has been deeply involved in documentary education. Between 2004 and 2005 he taught documentary filmmaking at the European Film College in Denmark. He has also taught at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona and at the Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión in Cuba, as well as leading documentary workshops in India, South Korea, and Bangladesh.
At the core of Audrius Stonys’s work lies a strong philosophical approach to cinema. He considers freedom to be the central issue in filmmaking, more fundamental than any aesthetic concern. He has often expressed concern about documentary cinema being constrained by expectations to inform, entertain, or educate. For Stonys, documentary film originates instead in wonder and contemplation, in the desire to pause time and observe the world as a miracle.
His 2011 film Ramin was selected as the Lithuanian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 85th Academy Awards, further consolidating his international reputation.
