Artišokai

He filmed her. They dreamt of living together between Bangladesh and Lithuania, making films together, opening a five-course restaurant and adopting orphans. Now he looks back on his life and his broken love affair.

A woman returns to old Vilnius in search of her grandmother’s house, only to find a city rapidly erasing the past in favor of the future. She wanders the changing streets and encounters colorful local characters – but as night falls, reaching her goal becomes increasingly difficult. The film is a poetic meditation on constant movement and a longing to belong.

For more than a decade, Artūras Morozovas has been photographing people in vulnerable situations – those who have experienced the Russian occupation and its consequences, those affected by the war in Ukraine, and those experiencing social isolation in Lithuania. He explores social problems that are still felt in both countries as a result of the Soviet occupation.

There is a story circulating among Zen Buddhist monks about two types of monks. First ones are settled and spend all their life in a monastery, they are identified with the blue mountains, while others are like white clouds – constantly traveling from one place to another. In the film, the filmmaker and Won Bo Sunim, a Lithuanian woman who decided to go to South Korea more than 20 years ago and become a Zen monk, embark on a journey in the mountains of South Korea.