The Queen of England Stole My Parents

Director's note

Two years ago, I became a father through adoption, and my daughter opened my eyes to a reality I had only half-seen. This film grows from that experience. I want to take audiences inside the emotional world of a child who has been abandoned – her hopes, her fantasies, her imaginary friend, her ironclad logic and her fierce sense of good and evil.
Through Smiltė's eyes, a chair can speak and anything can come alive. The adult world of her new foster parents is quieter, full of doubt and words they cannot find. I will hold these two worlds apart through space, distance and light, and let the distance shrink as they slowly learn to love each other. This is a film about love – the kind we all carry but don't always know how to express.
It is also about the children we still call "difficult" or "untrustworthy", labels that say more about us than about them. In Lithuania alone, thousands of children are waiting to be wanted.

Visually, I am inspired by Amélie and Little Miss Sunshine, musically by Yann Tiersen, and by the rooftops of Vilnius Old Town, where Smiltė's imagination takes refuge. I want viewers to begin in whimsy and end in truth – feeling what Smiltė feels and opening their hearts a little wider towards the children still waiting and the families who choose to walk beside them.

Screenwriter's note

Two years ago, I became a mother through adoption. It changed how I understand family – and it is why I wanted to write this story.
Children in the care system are often considered "too old" for adoption long before they reach their teens. Their waiting is rarely seen, and almost never from their side. Smiltė is one of these children. Her certainty that the Queen of England stole her parents is funny, but it is also how a child protects herself from a truth too big to hold.
Writing her, I drew on what I know now: that a family is not built overnight, that love and loyalty can pull in different directions and that the most serious moments often arrive alongside the most absurd ones. I wanted to keep both – a story where children laugh and adults recognise something true.
Families are made not only by blood, but by choice and commitment. I hope this film helps audiences see older children waiting for adoption not as a risk but as a family waiting to happen.

Producer's note

In 2014, Dansu Films released Ernestas Jankauskas's debut short The Queen of England Stole My Parents, winner of the Silver Crane for Best Lithuanian Short. Twelve years, two features and a major TV series later, Ernestas is one of Lithuania's most consistently working directors, and he has carried one question the whole time: what would this short look like as a feature?
The short still streams on multiple platforms and is still requested by schools. During the COVID lockdowns, it was made free so Lithuanian children would have culturally specific content. It refuses to fade – proof of its emotional core and of how little else exists like it. Across Europe, live-action family films for 7–12-year-olds are rare compared to animation, especially from small markets. To keep European audiences choosing European films, we need to build them from a young age.
The feature keeps the short's core – a girl sets out with an imaginary friend to find her "kidnapped" parents – but expands it to include the experience of the foster child and the adoptive parents. It is built for a contemporary 7–12 audience, with a layer that rewards the adults watching beside them.
The subject is urgent: in 2025, no child over ten was adopted in Lithuania. This film speaks directly to that gap.
Co-writer Gabija Siurbytė is a foster care ambassador, and both she and Ernestas are adoptive parents. Ernestas's feature Sasha Was Here (2018) explored adoption through an adult lens; this is its family-audience companion, written by authors who know the experience first-hand.
The film is financed by the Lithuanian Film Centre, Creative Europe MEDIA, the Vilnius Film Fund and LRT, and was developed at the Cinekid Script LAB and Producers LAB. In 2025, it won the Favourite Public Pitch award at Industry@Tallinn & Baltic Event.

Profile

Founded in 2008, Dansu Films is one of Lithuania's leading production companies. Its credits include the features Sasha Was Here and I Am Fine, Thanks, the series Troll Farm (Berlinale Series Market Selects) and co-productions Solomamma (Locarno Main Competition), Moscow Noir and Agent Hamilton.