Section: Feature Film Competition

PIETINIA KRONIKAS

SOUTHERN CHRONICLES

Ignas Miškinis
LT/EE, 2024, 121 Min

Whilst outside the West is suddenly on the doorstep, inside somebody has butterflies in the stomach. Provincial Lithuania in the 1990s. Rimantas grows up on a prefab housing estate, Monika is a member of the upper middle class. He plays rugby, she classical guitar; class barriers divide them and yet true love blossoms. Charismatic, lust-for-life cinema from the Baltic States’ transitionary years.

#feature #coming of age
#love

Performance

2024-11-06 | 16:00
Weltspiegel Großer Saal
2024-11-07 | 20:00
Weltspiegel Saal 2

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)

Drehbuch
Eglė Vertelytė
Kamera
Narvydas Naujalis
Ton
Saulius Urbanavičius
Schnitt
Danielius Kokanauskis
Ausstattung
Aurimas Akšys
Musik
Vytis Puronas
Darsteller
Džiugas Grinys, Robertas Petraitis, Digna Kulionytė
Produzent
Lukas Trimonis
Produktion
IN SCRIPT
Co-Produktion
Esko Rips, Ilya Medovy, Andreas Kask, NAFTA FILMS
Ignas Miškinis

Ignas Miškinis -