PÖFF 2025: China Sea | Interview with Jurgis Matulevičius

A cancelled martial artist finds refuge in a Taiwanese family’s restaurant: fists fly, cultures clash, and buried traumas rise to the surface in China Sea, winner of the Critics’ Picks Award at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival where it celebrated its world premiere. Champion fighter Osvald (Marius Repšys), banned after injuring a girl in a street fight, drifts through his bleak Lithuanian hometown until he’s taken in by Ju-Long, the lonely restaurant owner who becomes both ally and mirror. Court-ordered therapy brings him to Skaistė, whose raw honesty cracks something open in him, offering a fragile sense of possibility. But as director Jurgis Matulevičius—drawing from a real MMA legend and his own generation’s scars—reminds us, escaping violence is never simple. In this bold, emotionally charged second feature, written with breakout screenwriter Saulė Bliuvaitė, redemption flickers like a pilot light under pressure. I was lucky to meet the director, to delve into the film’s many layers: masculinity, fear, friendship, and the hope of becoming someone better.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: First of all, Jurgis, congratulations! China Sea has won Critics’ Picks Award at Black Nights Film Festival. Tell me a little bit about your festival experience and how it all feels.

Jurgis Matulevičius: It feels really good because I was making this film for four years and I think it’s really important for a creator to have an award once in four years. So, I feel really good. I really enjoyed the festival. The premiere was interesting because there was a line of people waiting for tickets and around 30 or 40 people couldn’t get in so I was really overwhelmed by that that you know the interest in the film was there.

And after that, yeah, I heard some very interesting insights and some interesting overviews of the film. In one way or another, it touched different people in a different way. So, yeah. I was really happy because I make films to touch people and because I want them to think after the film for some time.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: I can join in all of the praise because I really enjoyed the film. I read a little bit about the idea of the story, which is sort of based on true events of an MMA fighter who was from a similar background to Oswald in the film but you changed it in order to lead the story away from true events. What were the themes that spoke to you that you decided on the story in China Sea?

Jurgis Matulevičius: Yeah, this film is based on a true story of a Lithuanian fighter. He was like a kickboxing legend, a very troubled human being. I was inspired to make a story about him because he was a controversial figure. He was a superstar abroad, but in his home country, he had a really bad reputation because he fought outside the ring or would be caught stealing something… 

I really like controversial figures, so I dug deeper into that. And the thing what really made me want to do this film is when I met his coach and the character of the coach in the film is played by the actual coach of the guy on whom this film based. So when I met the coach he started telling me the other side of the story of the fighter’s story that you couldn’t read in the newspapers about how he fell in love with the sport and you know he showed me the other side of this human being.

It was interesting but also sad and that lured me into this story. It’s because it’s not only about this guy, but it’s a story about a generation of men my age who grew up in poor neighbourhoods, who are surrounded by violence, anger, and fear. And they were searching for role models in men who hid their feelings under a mask of masculinity and we learned to do the same. When I was growing up there was lots of bullying, fighting, humiliating, but it was the defense mechanism against the violent and toxic world we lived in. Some of us managed to get out of this world, but most of them are just stuck in it.

And I think that it’s a film about a man who is this angry teenager trapped in man’s body. And he tries to find a way out. It’s difficult for him because he grew up in a completely different environment. But the main thing for me is that he tries. He tries to change.

So this was one story and the other story was from a neighbourhood in Vilnius in the capital of Lithuania where I used to live and I usually passed this one corner where there was a restaurant named China Sea and I this lonely man would stand there and smoke a cigarette. He was of Asian heritage and I wanted to explore the theme of immigration and Asian community in my country. So somehow then I met my scriptwriter I had these two ideas for two different features, but we combined it into one.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: They really complete each other in a way. I want to focus a little bit about this setting of fighting, the boxing, martial arts. There are many movies with this setting. And there was even one out recently, The Smashing Machine. What do you think makes this group of people interesting characters.

Jurgis Matulevičius: Well, for me they are interesting because when you see how they can unleash this animal in the ring when they’re fighting how they can just switch to something that could kill a human life and destroy things. For me, it’s a really interesting for a character. How can this human being turn off this when the fight is finished and just live the normal life amongst us?

I grew up with that like watching Bushido, kickboxing and when I was growing up as a teenager, if there was ever conflict between men, you just went outside and you fight. And win or lose, now you settled this conflict, until another one. It was part of me growing up and that’s why I really wanted to talk about this theme. When you’re stuck in the past but the present world is changing so fast that you can’t find a place in that world so you need to do something.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: I really like the layers behind Oswald’s characterization, especially his relationship with the two women in the film. Skaiste is his fascination, his love interest, his ideal. And then we have the relationship with the female fighter that he tries to mentor. What sides to Oswald were you trying to show through these relationships with the women?

Jurgis Matulevičius: When he meets Skeiste… Well, in the film he first hears her monologue about her anger and he feels the same. He finds something in her words that he can relate to. And I think that he’s feeling very lonely living in this world. He searches for love but I think this is more that you get the love from your mother. It’s more about caring. In his mind he’s not sexualizing her, he’s searching for a friend in her, he’s searching for friend in Ju-Long… There is one theme that connects them all and it’s because they’re feeling lonely and they need a friend.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: I read that one of the hardest scenes to shoot was the ice scene when they’re jumping in the frozen lake. Why was it so important to include this scene in your film?

Jurgis Matulevičius: Well, it was important to show a routine of a fighter and what can you overcome not only physically but mentally. What you need to overcome to become unbeatable in the ring. In this scene, they build up their mental strength, but the only thing that they need to switch is this mental monologue that’s saying you can’t do this.

I think that this scene was really difficult for the actor Marius Repsys because during daytime he needed to go into freezing water like three times and at night we filmed him walking on the hot coal, so for him mentally it was really exhausting.

It wasn’t so hard for Angelica because Angelica is a real fighter. She isn’t an actress. I found her in a sports club in Kaunas and she’s prepared for a fight like this before.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: That’s so interesting. I would have never thought she wasn’t an actress because of the way that she emotes and even like the way she looks. She just has this special energy, really beautiful energy that translates to film.

Jurgis Matulevičius: Yeah, she really does and I was so lucky that I met her. She’s a natural talent for this and it was so easy to work with her. Even her intonations, everything she did was so real that for me, it was paradise. Working with her was a perfect fit.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: Tell me a little bit about the relationship to Ju Long and his family and employees in the restaurant. The restaurant gives the movie its title so it must be really important. Why are they important to Osvald? Why is it important to him to also be part of this community and why was it important for you to show it?

Jurgis Matulevičius: Ju-Long is lonely in a country where he is an immigrant and Oswald is lonely in his own country. So, I think that’s what connects them and that’s the engine of their friendship. Also, Ju-Long he sees in Osvald that maybe he will need him if there’s trouble. Because he sees in him this macho man, which he’s not because he’s a man of circumstances and he’s just doing anything to save his own ass. But in the end everything shifts and he tries to save the woman. to whom he’d done harm. But in his own way, he’s telling them I want you to never meet anyone like me again. So that’s his tragedy.

Osvald is trying to be a better person and he takes steps, he goes to psychotherapy, he starts to coach, he befriends a female fighter and they become really close. He’s always fantasizing about himself being a better person, but he’s just a step back from it. And, but in the end, you know clicks and he changes. Well, and he does one good deed, you know. I think that that connects all of them, Skaiste, Ju-Long and Osvald. They’re all caught between two worlds and without fully understanding either of these worlds.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: From what you’re saying, it feels as if they’re very near the edge. The edge keeps pulling them because they are from poor communities, struggling, maybe excluded socially, and they are near the edge is pulling them and they’re trying really slowly just to keep afloat. And sometimes or a lot of the times it doesn’t work.

Jurgis Matulevičius: I think that in this movie you can see that you can try lots of different things like psychotherapy to heal from their traumas, but what they’re really doing is closing their eyes to the violence which is in front of them and Ju-Long does the same. This theme is really important that we are so comfortable and we just close our eyes in front of things that are going to make us feel bad. And we’re just thinking about ourselves most of the time. There are moments in the flm when people are thinking about someone else and then you can see that human beings can be different.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: Yes, many layers to all of us. I’m really interested in how you think Osvald represents most Lithuanian men or Eastern European men or men in general? How would you describe him in this context?

Jurgis Matulevičius: I’m like 35, right? And I’m from an Eastern European country, which got its independence from the Soviet Union only in 1991. I grew up in a poor neighbourhood and it’s something that people who were brought up in different families, in intellectual families, in families with money, in Western Europe, maybe, don’t understand. When you see all this violence during your teenage years, it definitely gives you a psychological trauma. And the only way you’ve learnt to react to problems is through violence.

Your role models are men, most of the men I knew were really violent, toxic men and to survive in this environment, you needed to be like them, you need to hide your feelings. And I think that, especially in Eastern Europe, I was always taught to hide my emotions. Because men don’t cry, men need to be tough and so on. 

When I was like 21 or 22, I started studying in the Academy of Arts and the world shifted for me because we started learning things, that there was psychotherapy, psychology… That masculinity could be used in a good way… 

I changed because I had a chance to do that. But I know some of my friends, they didn’t have a chance to do that. And you’re living with this trauma, with inability to cope with it. And you’re just stuck. These guys, they’re formed by living in poor conditions surrounded by violence, by alcoholic fathers, maybe even mothers… And it’s so difficult then to be different because everyone around you is the same.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: Alcohol and substances stop your mind from imagination so it makes sense that they stay closed within their worlds, not being able to escape them because using all those substances and constant aggression, lack of sleep because of a lot of work and alcohol that just stops you from evolving really. Would you agree?

Jurgis Matulevičius: Yes, I would agree, but I think that also, you know, what they all felt and I felt is fear. The fear of being different, the fear of not being in a group, of not changing fast enough with the new world and then you feel excluded from everywhere and you feel so alone and that grows more anger in you and you become even more violent.

When you can’t find a way away from it, it’s like a circle which has no way out. And then you’re stuck. And then you’re stuck and you’re just going deeper into violence, into substances, into everything that is destroying you as a human being.

There’s so many of my friends that I knew and some of them now in jail, some of them are dead that Osvald is a portrait of, but also with a bit of me that he’s starting to change and understand that there’s more things that you can achieve being on the other side of violence.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: That’s such beautiful insight. Thank you. 

Would you say that any movie or a director influenced the way you wanted China Sea to look or feel?

Jurgis Matulevičius: Definitely Burning by Lee Chang-Dong. When I was doing China Sea, I actually watched lots of Asian cinema so Tsai Ming-Liang was a really big inspiration and Carlos Reygadas. There are some similarities with Mexican filmmaking and this movie because there’s so much violence like in Mexican literature and movies. 

But I the violence to be hidden so you don’t see it. You only see the aftermath of violence or it’s in the sound. That was an important thing for me to do, not to show it directly, because it reminds me of how we are living now. We’re living in cities where there isn’t that much visible violence, everything is behind closed doors and we’re sitting and watching wars on TV and social media, on the screen.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: I have to ask you one more question because of everything you said. What does filmmaking mean to you? What do you find in filmmaking that helps you either overcome, like you said, your background or express yourself in a meaningful way?

Jurgis Matulevičius: I think filmmaking for me is a form of expression and I wouldn’t know what else to do if I didn’t have filmmaking because it includes so many different things and I like to write, I like to watch films, I’m an addict, I was playing music and painting and filmmaking includes everything.

But the most important thing is that you can tell any kind of story to the audience, and for me it’s so important that in other filmmakers I can show personal stories. I was fascinated by filmmaking because of these personal stories and they touched me so much. So I really wanted to give the audience my personal story. And this film is so close to me because I’m actually telling the story that I know personally really, really well and I hope that the viewer will find some similarities in their own world, in their brothers, in their fathers or in themselves. Yeah, that’s important for me just to tell my story.