Kornelijus Matuzevičius

A moody portrait of Lithuanian Jewish writer and literary critic Jokūbas Josadė, who looks back on his wasted life.

When Henrikas Šablevičius started filming Lithuanian “oddballs” – a professor, a fortune teller, racers, and many others who fell short of the concept of the “model citizen” – he invented a bizarre new genre of documentary biopic. Characteristic of these portraits is a sense of mocking irony directed not at their subjects (on the contrary, the filmmaker’s affection for them is palpable) but at the “Soviet hero” genre. The subject of this film is Apolinaras, a kindhearted policeman who even outwardly looks very unlike the ideological “guardian of morals.”.

This film details the dismantling of the old railway Siaurukas in Lithuania and the construction of its new modern replacement. The old railway and the new railway become the symbol of the clash between the archaic rural Lithuania and Soviet industrialization. The film was often considered as an expression of the archetypes of Lithuanian character.