After the school was closed, the shop became the most important public space in the village of Varputėnai, Lithuania.  There is a public library, and a priest comes on Sundays to hold a church service, but the shop is a place where the locals exchange the news and discuss current events when they stop by for a beer after work. This is where people come just to talk.

Produced by Viktoras Jakovlevas
Edited by Annick Lesage
Sound design by Apollo Sillen
English translation by Živilė Kropaitė

Winner of best radio documentary at the Lithuanian Radio and Television Awards and featured at the International Feature Conference (IFC) in Dublin, Ireland, 2009.

Viktoras Jakovlevas is a journalist, news presenter, and a Lithuanian radio documentary pioneer. Back in 2008, along with his then colleague Justina Mitkaitė they started and co-produced ‘Radio documentary’ the first ever program dedicated to crafted radio features at the Lithuanian national broadcaster, LRT.

‘The Shop’ was his project for the EBU Master School on Radio Features training program 2007–2008.

Today it is widely regarded as a Lithuanian radio documentary ‘classic’.

To hear more work (with subtitles) from LRT visit their website here

This year LRT turned 100 years old. Learn more here.