17-year-old Sangaile is fascinated by stunt planes. Afraid of heights, she has never dared to even enter in one of the cockpits. At a summer aeronautical show, nearby her parents’ lakeside villa, she meets Auste, a local girl of her age who, unlike Sangaile, lives her life to the full with creativity and dare.
As the two girls become lovers, Sangaile allows Auste to discover her most intimate secret, and finds in her teenage love the only person to truly encourage her in flying.

A few years ago, I conducted several film workshops for teenagers. I thoroughly enjoyed working with them, and above all, I enjoyed filming them. At 17, on the cusp of adulthood, everything seems possible. I was greatly inspired by the open-minded and intense way in which the teenagers embraced things and expressed themselves. I was captivated by how spontaneous, free and ingenuous they were. This experience brought back feelings from my adolescence. When I was 17, like most teenagers, I was in a hurry to make choices while all the while being filled with doubt and fear. I wrote the story for THE SUMMER OF SANGAILE with the guiding idea that sometimes it only takes a chance encounter with someone who helps you to see yourself in a different light to overcome certain difficulties. I wanted this kind and caring individual to be another young girl of the same age, but whose personality was diametrically opposed to Sangaile’s in order to bring out her flaws and contradictions.
From the writing stage I had envisioned a film that would be bright and light, even if the movie addresses adolescent unrest and self-destructive behaviour, for with hindsight, obstacles that seemed insurmountable at the time are now put in their proper perspective. Yet, the joys of adolescence remain intense. Moments of fear and suffering appear to us today as necessary steps to find balance in our lives, emancipate our- selves and grow up.
Talking about adolescence, I wanted to make a very musical film that was also a love story with a sensorial, sensual dimension and which had a strong emotional impact. Setting aside the issue of gender while highlighting the symmetry of bodies seemed indispensable in order to focus on the narrative of human beings in the making, which is at the heart of this story.
I spent my adolescence in Lithuania, a country with a special, practically obsessive relationship with aviation. Every summer, like everyone, I went to see a great number of air shows. It seemed to me that this popular Lithuanian pastime would be the perfect metaphor for Sangaile. Aerobatics, an extreme sport, requires true self-control and that is just the thing that Sangaile seems to lack the most. She has to struggle within to free herself and achieve her dream.