08/07/2025 - Vytautas Katkus makes his feature debut with a poignant beach-town tale carved through the connections between individuals, spaces and encounters

A spider in its web, a tiny solitary island: the focuses of two zoom shots clue us into the quiet symbolism that underlies the thematic tapestry of Vytautas Katkus’s The Visitor [+see also:
trailer
interview: Vytautas Katkus
interview: Vytautas Katkus
film profile], which has just world-premiered in Karlovy Vary’s main competition and is thus vying for the Crystal Globe. Katkus makes his feature debut with the film after several shorts at Cannes and Venice, having also collaborated widely as a DoP – including on Toxic [+see also:
film review
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interview: Directors Talks @ European …
interview: Saulė Bliuvaitė
film profile], which most recently secured him a Lithuanian Silver Crane (see the news). The Visitor is co-written (with Slow [+see also:
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interview: Marija Kavtaradze
film profile] director Marija Kavtaradzė), directed and lensed by Katkus.

Following in the footsteps of his shorts, Katkus delivers first and foremost on analogue texture, with the richness of 16 mm coming through most vividly in scenes in natural environments, including the beach and the wooded areas dotted around. Here, we find 30-year-old Danielius (Darius Šilėnas), a new father living in Norway, who has returned to Lithuania to sell his parents’ flat one year after the death of his father, encountering familiar faces and new friends alike.

Among them are Vismantė (Vismantė Ruzgaitė) and her father (Arvydas Dapšys), the latter of whom runs a snack shop in this small resort town, alongside fleeting intersections with Tomas (Rokas Siaurusaitis), whom we find frolicking on occasion with his friend (Toxic director Saulė Bliuvaitė). Also with the inclusion of Laurynas Bareiša (the director of Drowning Dry [+see also:
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interview: Laurynas Bareiša
film profile]) as editor, Katkus’s film is another example of the sheer creative strength that collaboration between young talents has manifested recently in Lithuanian cinema.

Danielius may be the first person we are introduced to, but the mosaic created from the relationships – notably parent-child or some iteration of generational ties – of those around him is just as important. Other than a loose timeline of the packing and the sale of the flat, The Visitor is not defined by any major linear trajectories, but instead by the threads between the characters webbing outwards. At times, this leads the film to drag as the narrative landscape branches in different directions, but surrendering to its pacing feels like a warm embrace.

For instance, we are granted space to sit and simply observe the care that Vismantė takes with her child and are pulled to indulge in a gleeful, childlike scene where Tomas and friends play with a sound-activated lamp by shouting and screeching. Through the film’s soundscape (sound editing by Julius Grigelionis), the ambient noise of the characters’ environments is noticeably present. Uniquely, the dialogue is not always fully privileged, reminding us that we, too, are contextualised by the places in which we dwell.

Danielius takes his time to sit, lie down and rest in different spaces throughout the movie, epitomising a familiar sort of loneliness and estrangement that come with being a visitor to a place you once knew so well. The viewer is also quietly encouraged to dwell: Katkus draws our attention to fleeting encounters and conversations that are often the first ones to be forgotten because of their seeming inconsequentiality, but these ultimately make up the bedrock of our sensorial memory. Here, they are recognised in their profundity. Have a rest, Katkus seems to say, and stay a while.

The Visitor is a Lithuanian-Norwegian-Swedish co-production staged by M-Films, and co-produced by Staer Film and Garagefilm International. Paris-based Totem Films has the rights to the world sales.