Uku Studija

Award-winning Lithuanian documentary filmmaker Vytautas Puidokas’s new film tells the story of a rehabilitation centre on an abandoned farm. It’s a refuge for troubled recovering addicts and former prisoners hoping for one last chance at a normal life. It is run by Žanas, a former addict who has turned his life around through nature and religion. One day, a 14-year-old boy named Matas joins the farm, seeking solace from his own childhood trauma. Together they begin to confront his past.

The Lithuanian scientist Ausra Revutaite has spent 30 years in the Tian Shan mountain range in Central Asia, straddling the borders between Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and the autonomous Chinese region of Xinjiang. Some 3,500 meters above sea level with only her faithful dog and gray cat for company, she studies climate change on the Tuyuksu Glacier at an old Soviet-era research station. She loves the solitude and silence that her painstaking work brings her. Magnificent shots of her surroundings and everyday work are interspersed with archive footage of the people who preceded her by a century. Not much seems to have changed.

Haunted by childhood trauma, 32-year-old Roland turns to tantra and shamanic rituals for healing. But his most unexpected therapeutic practice is repairing washing machines. As he fixes what’s broken, he asks: is it true that real men don’t cry?