RIGA IFF: Viesis

Vytautas Katkus
The Visitor
Svečias
LT, NO, SE
2025, 115’, lt, en, no
Age 16+

 

This summer looks like an old roll of film that has finally been developed. Daniel is in his thirties, with a wife and a newborn baby in Norway. He is aware that life has given him exactly what he expected from it. At the end of summer, after ten years away, he returns to his native Lithuanian seaside town to sell his parents’ apartment where he grew up. As he tries to piece together the past through cassette tapes from his youth, swims in the sea and reunions with old friends who now face the same struggles as he does, everything seems at once familiar and strange. Daniel thinks of his life as ordinary, yet coming back awakens in him a certain wistfulness and solitude. He decides to stay longer than he had planned…

 

Following the success of Bareisa’s Drowning Dry (2024) and Bļuvaite’s Toxic (2024), the Lithuanian Group – a close-knit circle of young filmmakers – is brought back into the spotlight of festivals and audiences by director and cinematographer Katkus. His debut feature, exploring the ebbs and flows of Baltic re-migration, recently won the Best Director award in the main competition at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival. Interestingly, Daniel in this patina-clad odyssey into memory is played by editor Darius Šilėnas, who has no formal acting training. The novella-like format characteristic of Rohmer’s films is reborn in the tempo and chronology of the Baltic Sea, suffused with ineffable longing, organic rhythm and serene glow. Katkus is familiar to local audiences; his short film Cherries (2022) – a metafilm following the ‘fruitful dramedy’ of a father-son relationship – was included in the RIGA IFF short film competition.