This rewarding period drama, set during the interwar years, suggests the creation of an alternative Lithuania to counter invasion
Although aggressively retro both in terms of its subject – the annexation of Lithuania during the second world war – and visually, given that it’s shot in a boxy aspect ratio and in silvery black and white, this droll period drama from the Baltic is imbued with a very 21st-century arthouse approach to storytelling. Wilfully stingy with its explication, and seemingly made on the assumption that viewers will know at least something about recent Lithuanian history, it’s a fairly rarefied work, but rewarding for those up for a challenge.
Playfully padding out a rickety skeleton of historical fact with fleshy fiction, first-time writer-director Karolis Kaupinis creates a counterfactual drama set just before the start of the second world war in Kaunas, which was then the tiny nation’s capital as the Polish army had occupied Vilnius, Lithuania’s principal city, in 1920. Academic Feliksas Gruodis (Aleksas Kazanavičius), a geographer inspired by real-world figure Kazys Pakštas, has an ambitious idea to start a “backup Lithuania” somewhere far away –
Argentina, say, or Angola – just in case the original Lithuania gets colonised by a larger neighbour (Germany or the Soviet Union).