Pilgrims

Blending character drama and procedural piece, this Venice award-winning Lithuanian feature follows two people travelling to the sites of an immense loss in search of closure.

Indre meets Paulius at his mother’s house in the capital, Vilnius. He needs her to drive him to another town, where what connects them is slowly revealed. Paulius’s younger brother Matas, at the time Indre’s boyfriend, was abducted four years earlier. Retracing Matas’s steps across various locations, the pair come face-to-face with his suffering and confront their own feelings about the past.

Winner of Best Film in Venice’s Orizzonti program, Pilgrims traces a long-held journey for resolution, whether that manifests as clarity or reprisal. Director Laurynas Bareiša’s skill lies in his approach to the material: there are no scenes of violence, only an unflinching exploration of the shadowy corners of the human heart, which emerges as layers are gradually exposed and give way to moments of unease. Strongly steeped in its Baltic milieu, this sombre, stirring film probes both the quiet agony of its protagonists and the silence of the community complicit in Matas’s death.

“A striking feature debut from a director with an unconventional vision of the world and uncompromising stylistic approach … Cool, unsparing but humane.” – Screen Daily