The Visitor | Darius Šilenas

What if the past does not pass, and mourning appears to be an insurmountable and impalpable object? This situation lies at the core of Vytautas Katkus’ The Visitor, which is nevertheless far from being a heavy story. There is no trace of sadness here, but rather of an enjoyable melancholy. The eventual bittersweet taste at the bottom of the story is cloaked in a consistent sweetness made of tenderness and care. Returning to his Lithuanian hometown — in fact a holiday resort at the end of summer — the protagonist, Danielus, seems to enter an oasis of light-heartedness in which trust reigns. Is this visitor, who has recently become a father in Norway, experiencing a retreat into an island of childhood? Is The Visitor a “non-coming-of-age” film?

The strength of this delicate film lies less in its seemingly rambling dramaturgy than in its formal details. The analogue cinematography and the sound design (Julius Grigelionis) both bring a sensitive texture to the story. Some puzzling touches in the editing (Laurynas Bareiša) convey a temporal circularity that perfectly expresses the protagonist’s general atmosphere of suspension. Danielus, often framed at the margins of the image, communicates how the time and space of life are definitively larger than his radius of action. His agency is constantly surpassed by surprising events, and his desire to bring order to his past gradually gives way to surrender. The Visitor is the story of a gentle reconciliation with the past and with filial bonds — one that does not imply overcoming them. On the contrary, the film’s naturalism subtly unravels, and the boundaries between reality and imagination become blurred.

At Bildrausch Filmfest Basel, we met the lead actor, Darius Šilenas — in fact a film editor taking on his first acting role. This is not an unusual practice within the group of friends currently emerging as a new wave in Lithuanian cinema. Saulė Bliuvaitė, director of the winner of the 2024 Locarno Film Festival, Toxic (Akiplėša), also plays a role in a kind of parallel story within The Visitor. That same year, The Visitor’s editor, Laurynas Bareiša, won the Best Director Award in Locarno for Drowning Dry (Sesės). In Basel, we discussed with Darius Šilenas his experience as an actor and several aspects of the filmmaking process behind The Visitor.