Film By Current Student, Gabriele Urbonaite, Premiering at The Santa Barbara International Film Festival

The Last Day Of School, written and directed by current student Gabriele Urbonaite, will have its US premiere at The Santa Barbara International Film Festival on January 31. The film will play as part of the Shorts Program in the Dramatic Shorts category.

The Last Day Of School is a story of Edgaras who decides to smuggle illegal cigarettes from Belarus one last time.The film has previously played at the International Film Festival in Drama in Greece and won the Goldcrest Post-Production Award at FEST Pitching Forum in Portugal.

Born in Lithuania, Urbonaite, is a writer, director and editor who studied Philosophy at the Sorbonne University in Paris and earned her BFA in Film Production from Emerson College in Boston. She was selected to Berlinale Talents in 2012 and 2015, Odense Talent Camp in 2013, and FEST Pitching Forum in 2016. She is a recipient of the Princess Grace Film Award and “Silver Crane” National Lithuanian Film Award for Best Short Film. Her films, both narrative and documentary, focus on strong female characters and explore themes of cultural identity, migration, and otherness.