Vilnius Film Office presents the video series Films That Changed the History of Lithuanian Cinema. Through conversations with directors, actors, and film industry professionals, the series explores not only landmark films but also the growth of Lithuania’s film industry over the past 35 years. From major international awards and groundbreaking productions to bold creative choices and stories that resonated beyond national borders, these are the films that helped shape Lithuanian cinema.
Released in 2021, Pilgrims became one of the defining works of contemporary Lithuanian cinema. Laurynas Bareiša’s first feature film follows two people traveling through a small Lithuanian town as they attempt to come to terms with a devastating loss. Yet the film is about far more than personal tragedy. It explores memory, place, and the invisible emotional weight carried by locations that may appear entirely ordinary to an outside observer.
According to Bareiša, the idea for the film emerged while reflecting on places where traumatic events had occurred. After visiting the site of a real-life crime, he became interested not in the event itself, but in the way our perception of a place changes once we know what happened there. A seemingly unremarkable road, forest, or building can take on a completely different meaning when it becomes linked to tragedy. This idea eventually evolved into Pilgrims – a story about people traveling to places they have never seen before, yet which carry immense emotional significance for them.
The film also expands beyond personal grief into the realm of collective memory. Bareiša notes that Lithuania’s landscape is filled with places marked by historical tragedies – sites connected to partisan resistance, the Holocaust, and other painful chapters of history. Pilgrims invites viewers to reflect on how societies remember these events and how individuals build relationships with the past.
Film critic Vladas Rožėnas argues that Pilgrims approaches loss differently from most films. Rather than offering a clear path towards healing or closure, it focuses on the experience of living with grief over time. The story unfolds years after the central tragedy, reminding viewers that some experiences cannot simply be overcome. According to Rožėnas, the film is less concerned with conventional plot developments and more interested in allowing audiences to spend time with its characters and their emotional reality.
The production process itself was equally distinctive. Producer Klementina Remeikaitė recalls that Pilgrims was the first feature-length collaboration between her and Bareiša, following their work together on several short films. While the project presented numerous production challenges, the creative vision remained clear from the beginning. The film was shot chronologically – a relatively uncommon approach in filmmaking that allowed the story and performances to develop naturally throughout production. Support from the local community in Karmėlava, where much of the film was shot, also played an important role.
Bareiša describes Pilgrims as a multi-layered film that can be interpreted in different ways by different viewers. Some may see it as a crime story, others as a film about mourning, while some may relate to it simply as a journey through spaces connected to someone who is no longer present. Rather than imposing a single meaning, the film leaves room for audiences to bring their own experiences into the viewing process.
Pilgrims became a landmark not only for Lithuanian cinema but also internationally. The film won the top award in the Horizons program at the Venice Film Festival – the first such achievement for a Lithuanian feature film. Remeikaitė recalls that the greatest surprise was not the award itself, but the realization that a film from a small Baltic country could be judged primarily on its artistic merit rather than on the size of its industry or the scale of its international partnerships. In her view, the success of Pilgrims reinforced the belief that it is ultimately the filmmakers and the film itself that matter most.
Today, Pilgrims remains one of the most important Lithuanian films of recent years. It is a work that refuses easy answers and invites viewers to engage with questions of memory, loss, and time on their own terms. More importantly, it demonstrated that Lithuanian cinema can not only reach international audiences but also tell deeply human stories that resonate far beyond national borders.
