A pilgrimage is a journey taken for devotion, redemption or salvation and for Paulius and Indre, it is an attempt at all three.

Paulius (Giedrius Kiela), with a bowl hair cut, disheveled appearance and shuffling gait is intent on visiting all of the places his brother Matus was taken in the final hours of his life. Co-opted as driver is Matus’s girlfriend Indre (Gabija Bargailaite) who seems a reluctant partner in Paulius’s grief and anger.

As they travel from place to place they meet the people who saw Matus after he was kidnapped and tortured by small town thug. The culpability of individuals who didn’t intervene and, by extension, a whole village is a theme, underlined by local Martynas (Paulius Markevicius) who points out the sites of so many atrocities – a friend raped and murdered, a family killed by a father, a war grave in the woods. Why is this one exceptional? It’s a chilling idea, that grief is so common that to indulge it is to succumb.

It’s a slow moving story and we are given time to sit with both Paulius and Indre as they struggle in different ways. The ending is similarly low-key and says a lot about the futility of revenge or redemption in the face of pointless violence.

It’s an accomplished first feature by Laurynas Bareiša that infuses a very human experience with somber empathy.

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