PIETINIA KRONIKAS

The camera, consistent in its 1990s film look, is so close to the action that you feel this adolescent love affair were playing out before your very eyes. With its back and forth between falling in love, quarrelling, making up, first sex and the parents’ first doubtful glances. When too much alcohol or jealousy is involved, or when a brother and friends interfere. Between the envy, malice and paternalism. You empathise, dance along and yourself throw up in the bucket after drinking more than you can handle. Socialism is not quite over with and yet society is already splitting into rich and poor - though actually it was like that before, with the haves and the have-notes. The punk soundtrack is apt: shortly before graduating from school a few friends fall by the wayside; too much art, too much arrogance, too much beer, too many drugs, too much violence. The lust for life remains. Monika talks of studying in the West. Rimantas starts reading books to impress his new girlfriend. Ultimately however, both of them realise that points of view are resistant to change. Especially so when, in what is a rapidly evolving social climate, every milieu is growing increasingly assertive. Director Ignas Miškinis consciously decided to set his true-to-life coming-of-age drama in Šiauliai, a run-of-the-mill provincial town with the potential to resonate with audiences: here longing and disappointment, highly ambitious plans and deep frustration live side-by-side. All the way to the horizon - and then?

Text: Bernd Buder

06.11.2024 | 16:00 | Weltspiegel Großer Saal (original version with English and German subtitles)

07.11.2024 | 20:00 | Weltspiegel Saal 2 (original version with English and German subtitles)