Entertainment

The Other Dream Team

“The Other Dream Team’’ is possibly the best documentary ever made about basketball in Lithuania. But it’s more than just a sports movie: It tells how that tiny Balkan nation (population 3 million) — with the aid of its basketball team and the Grateful Dead — was freed from Soviet tyranny.

Director Marius Markevicius weaves together archival footage and new interviews. Prominent among the talking heads are Arvydas Sabonis and Sarunas Marciulionis, two leading lights of Lithuanian basketball in the 1980s who went on to play in the NBA. (The Dead’s Mickey Hart pops up briefly.) The presentation is conventional in style but uplifting in spirit, and worth seeing even if you know nothing about basketball.