Wild Love
A dating show turns into a grotesque fight for survival when a hidden experiment is unleashed.
The legendary reality show returns for its 20th anniversary, gathering Baltic contestants on Saaremaa Island for trials of endurance and emotion, winnable only as a couple. Aging hosts Robertas and Inga need real drama to stay relevant and they get it when contestant wanders into an abandoned Soviet lab and is bitten by a mutated creature, infecting her with a decades-old serum that begins to spread.
As the script blurs into reality, the hosts choose ratings over rescue. In the chaos, idealist Arnas and game-player Kotryna find something unscripted: real feelings. But when only pairs can win the final challenge, Kotryna chooses the game over Arnas. Was their love real, or just television?
Producers' note
Wild Love is a provocative work exploring the fragility of truth, reality, and emotion in contemporary media society. As producers, we see this film as a thematically timely, audience-accessible genre hybrid, blending psychological satire, social commentary, and horror elements. Director Jonas Trukanas has already shown a strong ability to blend arthouse and genre filmmaking, delivering a debut feature filmed on a modest budget that found both festival recognition and commercial success.
It is an ambitious project that presents considerable production challenges, but one that is deeply intriguing and complex on a conceptual level. The film is being developed as a uniquely pan-Baltic project from the ground up. The concept draws directly on memories of the reality show Robinsons– a survival series that became a massive cultural phenomenon across all three Baltic states in the 2000s, watched by entire families. As with the original show's participants, the cast will be made up of representatives from Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.
The project is currently in development. In July 2026, we confirmed Lithuanian Film Centre funding for pre-production work. At this stage, we are actively looking for co-production partners and a sales agent to join us on this journey.
Director's note
What interests me most about Wild Love is a feeling I increasingly have about the world: I am not always sure what is true anymore. The same event can become a different reality depending on who films it, edits it and tells the story. At some point, the story can become stronger than what happened.
Wild Love takes that anxiety and puts it inside a reality show. It is not a parody. I want the show to feel glossy, colourful and convincing. At first, the format gives everything meaning. Then we hear “cut” and another reality appears underneath: colder, stranger and less controlled.
Soon even that distinction collapses. When the infection appears, Robertas and Inga do not stop filming. They turn it into television. Real fear becomes entertainment, violence becomes another challenge, and the apocalypse becomes part of the show. The more reality falls apart, the harder everyone tries to squeeze it back into a familiar story.
The infected are the horror version of the same idea. A Soviet obedience serum erases their identity and makes them repeat Russian phrases. Somebody else’s words come out of their mouths. For me, being from the Baltics, that has historical weight, but it also connects to the present: propaganda, media and algorithms compete to tell us what reality means.
Arnas believes in the world Wild Love sold him. Kotryna believes the opposite: nothing is real, so play the game. Robertas and Inga have gone further; the show is no longer their profession, it is their reality.
Visually, the film goes through the same collapse. We begin close to people while their emotions are performed, then move away as the world becomes colder and more frightening, and only then feel them for real. Eventually reality television and horror bleed into each other.
Yet Arnas and Kotryna find something genuine. If almost everything can be edited, reframed and turned into content, maybe another person and what we feel for them is the last piece of reality we can still trust.
Biography
Jonas Trukanas is a Lithuanian genre filmmaker and screenwriter. A two-time Berlinale Talents alumnus, he graduated with honors in Film Directing from UCA Farnham. His short films have screened at numerous international festivals. His feature debut, Pensive (2022), premiered at Tallinn Black Nights, screened at Torino, FrightFest and other genre festivals, and was released in North America as a SCREAMBOX Original.
Biography
Titas Laucius (born in 1993) is screenwriter and a film director. He co-wrote films like “Pensive” – the first Lithuanian slasher comedy, an international award winning documentary “Animus Animalis” and a dramedy “Film Feature about Life”.
In 2022 his debut feature film “Parade” won a prize for a best director in “GoEast” film destival. Also, Polish filmmaking company “Gigant films” bought the films script and did a remake. It’s called “Divorce” and it is on Netflix.
Biography
Klementina Remeikaitė (b. 1988) is a Lithuanian film producer and co-founder of the Vilnius-based company Afterschool.
She has produced award-winning short films that screened at Berlinale, Venice and Locarno.
Her features include “Pilgrims” (Venice Orizzonti winner, 2021), “Parade” (Best Director, goEast 2023) and “Drowning Dry” (Best Director, Locarno 2024).
She has been a European Film Academy member since 2024.
Biography
Rūta Kiaupaitė is a Vilnius-based producer at Afterschool, currently co-producing Jonas Trukanas’s Wild Love alongside Klementina Remeikaitė, as well as other titles in the company’s slate.
A UCL graduate in Visual Anthropology and Documentary Filmmaking and a former producer for the Lithuanian National Broadcaster, she also teaches at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre.
Profile
Founded in 2014, the company has been awarded at major festivals including Locarno (Drowning Dry, 2024) and Venice's Orizzonti (Pilgrims, 2021), and continues to develop new projects with directors Laurynas Bareiša, Saulė Bliuvaitė, Jonas Trukanas and Titas Laucius, alongside debut directors.