Locarno Entry ‘Toxic’ Captures Lithuania’s Modeling Agency Scene

Showing in competition at Switzerland’s Locarno Film Festival, writer-director Saulė Bliuvaitė’s debut feature “Toxic” is a hard-hitting coming-of-age story which eschews the cliches as her 13-year-old protagonists come to terms with their bodies and identities one hot summer in Lithuania. 

Marija (Vesta Matulytė) and Kristina (Ieva Rupeikaitė) are two young girls who form a friendship as they become aspirants for a modelling school which promises an escape from their dreary reality. 

“When I was 13, it was very popular for very, very young teenage girls from 12-13 years old to try and enroll in modeling agencies,”  Bliuvaitė tells Variety. “Girls from the Baltic countries were very popular. You know, pale skin and thin figures. My own experience is participating in this casting, standing in these enormously long lines in the mall. We all look the same in this girl factory.”

“I was actually enrolled in the modeling agency. I was very thin at that time – I was 14 or something. And I remember the lady measured me, and she said, you know, you should lose from here, started to draw the lines on my body, like which parts are too big. And I remember the eyes of my mother. She was looking at her and thinking, ‘Where are these big parts that I should lose?’ When I look at it now, it was quite a harsh experience for a very young teenage girl.”

Sold by Bendita Film Sales, part of the film’s inspiration came from the 2011 documentary “Girl Model” by Ashley Sabin and David Redmond, while part of it came from her own experience. “Watching this film I remembered how it was, the castings I participated in.” 

Casting her own female leads, was she ever worried about replicating some of the conditions she wished to document? “We met with a lot of girls over two years. And these casting sessions were very low key. We would meet with the girls and talk with them. And it was part of gathering information. Not just to cast the film but we would engage in conversations and these girls would talk about their experiences connected to the script and to the story. This meeting was for conversations and I would use their stories in the film as well. So I tried to take the edge of the casting this way. Once we had a pool of potential candidates for the main characters, we did workshops together with all the girls. We would do some acting games. I wanted to make this experience, the casting process enjoyable.”

Although the story is set in this social realist world, the film feels very different from that kind of naturalism. “I was really trying to get as far as I could from the coming-of-age, teenage film, when the camera is in your face and you’re following the emotions of the characters. I wanted to make this film also about the environment; about the places where the story takes place. There are also these scary elements, maggots and things, because, from my experience in the life of teenagers, where you have in front of you a huge zone. It’s like uncharted territory for you. A lot of things are very scary. I wanted to give the audience the sense of this horror film vibe.” 

And nothing is more scary than the changes in your own body. “I really wanted to make this film very fleshy because it’s a lot about the flesh; to make the audience feel this flesh through the screen. To show scenes that these girls go through, deep situations that are very connected to the flesh. To have a piercing in your tongue. You are touching a body that you have never touched. You’re like dealing with your own body. You don’t understand it. You feel awkward, you know? And I feel there is some kind of weirdness and ugliness in it, you know, but also a lot of mystery.”

“Toxic” is produced by Lithuanian independent studio Akis Bado founded by Giedre Burokaritè and Robertas Nevecka and based in Vilnius. The studio is best known for the animated shorts “Snow Shelter” (2020) and “Mora Mora” (2021) having picked up a clutch of awards. Funded with the support of the Lithuanian Film Center and Lithuanian National Radio and Television, the title also won the Work in Progress Award at Meeting Point Vilnius 2024.