Pilgrims
Pilgrims
Pilgrims
Pilgrims

Pilgrims

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    • Directed by: Laurynas Bareiša
    • Released: 2023 (educational)
    • Year of Production: 2021
Running Time: 92 min
Language: Lithuanian 
Subtitle Options: English Closed Captions
Subjects: Narrative Fiction
      
        

A work of fiction that emerges directly from elements of reality: a newspaper article, the space occupied by a small town, and its surroundings. A young man (Giedrius Kiela) and a young woman (Gabija Bargailaite) drive from Vilnius to a village to find out something.... 

The viewer is given very little information, and as the film proceeds, we slowly start to understand what happened and what reunites them. There is a sense of familiarity, and of sharing the trauma of a horrible event. They both have a profound need to understand, but they couldn’t be more different. One moves with aggressiveness, the other moves with care, but they both need the same thing: to be in contact with the last people and spaces Matas was in contact with, to sink into his waters, to believe that a person’s presence remains beyond death.

Filmmaker Laurynas Bareiša uses absence as a structuring principle, unfurling the plot by way of rumors and insinuations. Matas’ death is at once the film’s unresolved enigma and its epicenter; by refusing to make it visible and forcing us to picture it ourselves, to conjure our own version of the events, not only does Pilgrims make its central secret almost unbearably unnerving, it also makes us accomplices in its unearthing. 

Skillfully doling out narrative information piece by piece and layer upon layer in scenes marked by elegant, sinister single takes, Bareiša has created a foreboding, yet ultimately hopeful portrait of people racked with trauma and unresolved anger.

            

AFI European Union Film Showcase Silver Spring, MD • Baltic Film Expo Los Angeles, CA • Boston Baltic Film Festival Boston, MA • Chicago European Union Film Festival Chicago, IL • New Directors New Films New York, NY • New York Baltic Film Festival New York, NY

        
"An eerie, impeccably controlled Lithuanian nail-biter."- Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
     

"This cool, unsparing but humane essay on human suffering and its repercussions can justifiably be categorised as a horror story. Pilgrims is a striking feature debut from a director with an unconventional vision of the world and uncompromising stylistic approach." -Jonathan Romney, Screen Daily
     

About the filmmaker 

 

Laurynas Bareisa holds a bachelor's degree in both applied mathematics from Vilnius University and in cinematography from Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre. In 2016 he finished his studies for a master's degree in film directing.

      

       

           

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