How to Divorce During the War (2025) by Andrius Blazevicius

Lithuania · Czech Republic · Luxembourg · Ireland | 2025 | 108 min | Drama

➡️ Where to Watch: US

Set in Vilnius in 2022, How to Divorce During the War begins with an almost brutally uncomfortable collision between the personal and the historical: executive Marija decides to discuss divorce with her husband Vytas just one day before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Their domestic separation then unfolds alongside the arrival of refugees and a society confronting a crisis far larger than their own.

Set in Vilnius in 2022, How to Divorce During the War begins with an almost brutally uncomfortable collision between the personal and the historical: executive Marija decides to discuss divorce with her husband Vytas just one day before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Their domestic separation then unfolds alongside the arrival of refugees and a society confronting a crisis far larger than their own.

War stories usually push individual problems aside as history takes control of the narrative. How to Divorce During the War does something more uncomfortable: it allows Marija and Vytas to remain consumed by the frustrations, selfishness and emotional confusion of a collapsing marriage while a humanitarian emergency develops around them. The contrast asks whether private suffering becomes less legitimate when other people are facing something objectively worse—or whether human beings simply remain trapped inside their own lives regardless of what is happening outside.

That makes the film particularly relevant to contemporary cinema’s growing interest in examining historical upheaval through ordinary behaviour rather than heroic action. The refugee crisis does not merely provide dramatic scale; it puts the couple’s choices under pressure, exposing contradictions between compassion and self-interest, responsibility and resentment, and the values people claim to possess versus how they behave when those values become inconvenient. The premise therefore turns divorce into a lens for examining something larger: how personal morality behaves when history suddenly enters everyday life.

➡️ Movie Insight: How to Divorce During the War makes a private relationship crisis collide with a geopolitical one, revealing how quickly ordinary frustrations, moral convictions and comfortable identities can become unstable when the world around them changes.

This is best approached as a slow-burning character drama rather than a conventional war film. Its focus remains on relationships, behaviour and uncomfortable contradictions, with long takes and restrained filmmaking allowing tensions to accumulate instead of forcing dramatic confrontation. Early Sundance viewers particularly noted its mixture of bleakness, realism, awkward humour and emotional discomfort, while also identifying its deliberate pacing as something that may challenge audiences looking for faster narrative momentum.  

It should appeal especially to audiences interested in European arthouse cinema, morally ambiguous character studies and films in which political events are experienced through domestic life rather than explained through conventional political storytelling. Viewers looking primarily for a direct account of the war in Ukraine may find the film’s emphasis surprising: the larger crisis matters precisely because Blazevicius continually brings attention back to the flawed people trying to behave normally inside it.

➡️ Viewing Takeaway: Watch it if you appreciate patient, psychologically observant cinema that allows humour, selfishness, compassion and discomfort to exist together without telling you exactly how to judge its characters.

The film’s strongest visibility driver is its festival trajectory. After competing for the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize – Dramatic at Sundance 2026, Andrius Blazevicius won the festival’s World Cinema Dramatic Directing Award. The film subsequently accumulated further recognition, bringing its reported record to three wins and three nominations across Sundance, Hong Kong, Las Palmas and Göteborg.

That momentum is particularly significant for a Lithuanian-language European drama without the commercial machinery of a major studio release. Blazevicius also won Best Director – Young Cinema at the Hong Kong International Film Festival, while the film won the Silver Lady Harimaguada for Best Film at Las Palmas. Combined with its provocative title and immediately understandable collision of divorce and war, those achievements give the film several discovery hooks at once: festival prestige, topical relevance, moral controversy and an unusual premise that can be communicated in a single sentence.

➡️ Viral Insight: The movie does not need spectacle to generate conversation because its central contradiction is itself provocative: what does it mean to remain preoccupied with your marriage while people nearby are fleeing a war? Festival awards are expanding its visibility, but that uncomfortable question gives audiences something to debate after the screening.

The film’s defining choice is refusing to transform its central couple into representatives of an uncomplicated moral position. Marija and Vytas can behave sympathetically in one moment and selfishly in another. Even their relationship with the refugee crisis becomes part of this instability, allowing humanitarian impulses, frustration and personal dysfunction to occupy the same domestic space rather than separating people neatly into heroes and villains.

Blazevicius reinforces this approach through observational filmmaking. Long conversations, extended shots, restrained sound and uncomfortable humour keep the drama close to ordinary behaviour even when extraordinary events are happening beyond the characters’ immediate world. Audience reactions from Sundance repeatedly highlighted this balance between realism, bleakness, awkward comedy and morally imperfect characters, suggesting that the film’s distinction comes less from the novelty of its historical setting than from how deliberately ordinary it allows people to remain within it.  

➡️ Standout Insight: Instead of making ordinary people suddenly heroic because history has arrived, How to Divorce During the War examines the more unsettling possibility that people remain contradictory, distracted and imperfect even when the world demands something better from them.

A growing strand of contemporary cinema is shrinking major political and social events down to human scale. Rather than explaining crises through leaders, institutions or sweeping historical narratives, filmmakers increasingly position audiences inside apartments, marriages, workplaces and families where global instability becomes visible through changing relationships and everyday decisions. The political becomes powerful precisely because it interrupts something recognisably ordinary.

How to Divorce During the War fits this movement particularly well because divorce and invasion begin almost simultaneously, creating two forms of instability that continually expose each other. Its strategy suggests an important direction for socially engaged filmmaking: audiences do not necessarily need more exposition about enormous events; they can understand their psychological and moral consequences by watching what those events do to people attempting to continue their everyday lives.

➡️ Movie Trend Insight: Contemporary political cinema is becoming more intimate, using marriages, families and ordinary relationships to make enormous historical events emotionally understandable without reducing them to conventional issue-driven storytelling.

The strongest audience is likely to be culturally engaged viewers who discover international cinema through festivals, critics, independent theaters and curated streaming platforms and who value moral ambiguity, realism and character psychology more than conventional narrative momentum.

The movie can reach beyond specialist festival audiences because its emotional entry point is immediately familiar. A marriage breaking down requires no geopolitical expertise, while the war context gradually expands that private conflict into questions about responsibility, empathy and social behaviour. That accessibility gives distributors a useful bridge between audiences seeking sophisticated political cinema and viewers primarily attracted to psychologically complicated relationship dramas.

Its more significant challenge is pacing. The 108-minute runtime, observational construction and extended takes position it closer to European festival cinema than mainstream relationship drama. That narrows the broad commercial audience but strengthens its identity among viewers specifically looking for films that trust observation and ambiguity rather than constantly accelerating the story.

➡️ Audience Insight: The opportunity lies in positioning the film not simply as a movie about war, but as a recognisable relationship drama whose moral stakes become dramatically larger because history refuses to remain outside the couple’s front door.

For filmmakers and producers, How to Divorce During the War demonstrates that geopolitical relevance does not require geopolitical scale. A comparatively intimate story can engage with war, displacement, nationalism, compassion and social responsibility through a marriage and a household. That creates opportunities for independent filmmakers working with limited resources: contemporary urgency can come from proximity to major events rather than expensive representations of those events.

For festivals and distributors, the film also demonstrates how recognition can progressively build international discovery around a smaller national production. Sundance’s directing win gives Blazevicius a powerful creative credential, subsequent festival awards extend the film’s international life, and its Lithuanian submission for the 2027 Academy Awards’ Best International Feature Film category potentially creates another visibility window.   The lesson is particularly relevant for independent distribution: a distinctive premise, strong festival validation and an easily communicated contemporary theme can together create cultural visibility without requiring blockbuster scale.

➡️ Industry Insight: Smaller international films can compete for attention by making enormous issues emotionally immediate. How to Divorce During the War shows how a specific local story, a strong human contradiction and carefully accumulated festival recognition can turn intimate filmmaking into an internationally relevant proposition.

How to Divorce During the War begins with an intensely personal crisis: Marija wants to end her marriage to Vytas just as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine suddenly changes the political and emotional reality surrounding their family. What makes the premise distinctive is that neither crisis cancels the other. Divorce still hurts, relationships still fracture and ordinary frustrations continue even when events outside make those problems appear almost insignificant.

The narrative builds its tension by allowing the marriage and the war to develop beside each other rather than forcing them into a simple metaphor. Marija and Vytas must navigate separation, parenting, work and resentment while refugees arrive and Lithuania confronts the implications of a war beginning nearby.

That collision continually changes the scale through which their problems are viewed. A marital argument can feel enormous inside a home and strangely small against geopolitical catastrophe, yet the emotional consequences remain real. The film’s storytelling works because it refuses to decide that one kind of crisis automatically invalidates the other.

Andrius Blaževičius approaches the premise with restraint rather than turning the invasion into dramatic spectacle. The war enters ordinary life through conversations, social changes, refugees and growing awareness, allowing historical instability to become part of the characters’ everyday environment.

That controlled approach received major recognition at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, where Blaževičius won the Directing Award — World Cinema Dramatic and was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize. His direction is strongest when the private and political occupy the same dramatic space without one simply becoming an illustration of the other.

Žygimantė Elena Jakštaitė gives Marija the complexity necessary for a character whose personal priorities can appear almost uncomfortable against the events surrounding her. Her desire for change remains emotionally legitimate even as the film increasingly exposes the privilege and insulation surrounding her everyday life.

Marius Repšys gives Vytas his own frustrations, disappointments and vulnerabilities rather than reducing him to the husband standing in Marija’s way. Together, the performances prevent the marriage from becoming an abstract dramatic device: these remain recognisable people trying to reorganise their lives while the meaning of normality around them changes.

The visual world does not need battlefields to communicate the proximity of war. Vilnius remains recognisable as an everyday European city—homes, workplaces, streets and social spaces continue functioning—but that apparent normality becomes increasingly fragile once the characters understand how quickly political circumstances can change.

Domestic spaces reinforce the emotional separation between Marija and Vytas. Physical distance and divided environments allow the breakdown of their relationship to become visible, creating a quieter visual connection between structures that appear stable and the instability developing underneath them.

At the centre of the film is an uncomfortable question: how much space are people allowed to give their own problems when something far worse is happening nearby? Marija and Vytas cannot simply stop experiencing the collapse of their marriage because war has begun, yet the invasion inevitably changes how their concerns appear.

That tension opens the story toward larger questions about privilege, empathy, responsibility and the limits of individual perspective. The film is less interested in condemning its characters for thinking about themselves than in examining how difficult it can be for people to understand where their private lives fit within much larger historical events.

The film’s most distinctive creative choice is straightforward: it places an ordinary marital breakdown directly beside an extraordinary historical rupture. Instead of making a film primarily about war or primarily about divorce, Blaževičius investigates what happens when both realities occupy the same emotional space.

That combination allows How to Divorce During the War to operate simultaneously as relationship drama, social observation and portrait of a society confronting sudden instability. The larger event does not replace the smaller story. It changes how audiences understand its scale.

➡️ Creative Insight: How to Divorce During the War turns the collision between private crisis and historical crisis into its central dramatic engine. By allowing divorce, parenting, privilege and everyday frustration to continue beside the shock of war, Andrius Blaževičius shows that history rarely arrives after ordinary life has conveniently finished—it interrupts people while they are already dealing with problems of their own.

These recent films similarly place intimate relationships, families and individual moral choices inside larger social or political pressures, showing how events outside the home can suddenly change the meaning of conflicts happening inside it.

A newly promoted investigating judge becomes increasingly paranoid as political unrest intensifies in Tehran, while his wife and daughters begin questioning the institutions and assumptions governing their family. The household gradually becomes a concentrated version of the conflict unfolding outside it.

➡️ Why It Connects: Like How to Divorce During the War, The Seed of the Sacred Fig refuses to separate family relationships from political reality. Both films show historical events entering domestic spaces and forcing characters to reconsider loyalties, responsibilities and assumptions that previously seemed stable.

During the 1972 Munich Olympics, an American television sports crew suddenly finds itself covering the hostage crisis unfolding nearby. Professionals accustomed to reporting athletic competition must rapidly confront questions of responsibility, ethics and how ordinary work changes when history unexpectedly arrives.

➡️ Why It Connects: Both films examine the destabilising moment when people realise that their familiar routines are continuing inside a much larger historical event. Where How to Divorce During the War brings geopolitical crisis into marriage and family life, September 5 brings it into the workplace.

➡️ Where to Watch: US · AU · CA · UK · FR · IT · ES · DE

A teacher investigating theft at her school becomes trapped inside an escalating conflict involving students, parents, colleagues and institutional rules. What initially appears manageable grows into a broader examination of responsibility, certainty and the unintended consequences of trying to do the right thing.

➡️ Why It Connects: Like How to Divorce During the War, the film examines people attempting to manage immediate personal problems while larger systems complicate every decision. Both turn seemingly contained conflicts into questions about responsibility, perspective and how individuals behave when circumstances become larger than they expected.

➡️ Where to Watch: US · AU · CA · UK · FR · IT · ES · DE

How to Divorce During the War finds its power in the uncomfortable coexistence of radically different scales of crisis. Blaževičius takes an ordinary marital breakdown and places it beside the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, allowing domestic frustration, parenting, privilege and political responsibility to continually reshape how audiences perceive one another.

The film’s restraint prevents its provocative premise from becoming a gimmick. Instead, the contrast becomes a way of examining how people actually experience history: not from outside their existing lives, but while marriages are failing, careers are continuing and families are already struggling. Its 2026 Sundance World Cinema Dramatic Directing Award, Hong Kong Golden Firebird Best Director win and Las Palmas Silver Lady Harimaguada for Best Film reinforce the film’s international recognition.

➡️ Final Verdict: 4/5 — A sharply observed relationship drama that places marital collapse beside geopolitical rupture, revealing how private problems continue to matter even when history suddenly changes their scale.

Contemporary filmmakers are increasingly exploring major political and social events through ordinary people whose existing lives do not stop when history changes around them. Relationships still fail, children still need attention, careers continue and personal ambitions remain important. How to Divorce During the War makes that contradiction its central subject by placing one family’s separation beside a geopolitical rupture that radically changes the scale through which their problems are understood.

This approach can make political cinema more immediate because audiences encounter historical change through recognisable human behaviour rather than only institutions, leaders or battlefields. The opportunity is to show how large events infiltrate kitchens, workplaces, marriages and friendships—revealing that history is ultimately experienced through everyday life.

➡️ Final Insight: History does not wait for personal problems to end before arriving. How to Divorce During the War shows how private crises can remain emotionally real even when a much larger crisis suddenly surrounds them. Cinema can make major historical events more human by showing what happens when the extraordinary enters lives that were already complicated.