‘The Visitor’ review: Lithuanian debut takes a fresh approach to the issue of migration

Dir: Vytautas Katkus. Lithuania/Norway/Sweden. 2025. 115mins.

The theme of migration is so completely mined in arthouse cinema, it’s uncommon to discover a image that has one thing contemporary to say. However The Customer, the spectacular debut movie from Lithuanian cinematographer and director Vytautas Katkus, finds each a special approach and an authentic technique of exploring it. Relatively than look at the expertise of being a newcomer in a wierd nation, the movie unpicks the disorientating disconnect of returning to the place that after was house and discovering your self a stranger. 

Quietly substantial and insightful

A wry puzzle of an image, during which not the entire items slot collectively, The Customer follows Danielius (Darius Silenas), who has made a life in Norway together with his spouse and child son. Following his father’s dying, he returns to his childhood house in a small Lithuanian seaside resort to promote his father or mother’s flat. However as soon as there he can not convey himself to go away, caught up within the melancholy means of renavigating his early recollections.

The Customer is the most recent title to emerge from Lithuania’s small however prolific movie group: it’s co-written with Marija Kavtaradze (director of the Sundance 2023 prize-winner Gradual) and edited by Laurynas Bareisa (director of Drowning Dry), Katkus additionally served as cinematographer on Lithuania’s 2024 Locarno Golden Leopard winner Poisonous, directed by Saule Bliuvaite (who has a supporting position on this movie). Katkus’s earlier directing expertise contains brief movies Group Gardens (2019), which premiered in Critics’ Week at Cannes; Locations (2020), which launched in Venice; and Cherries (2022), which additionally performed in Cannes. The Customer publicizes him as a particular new voice, who ought to discover a pure house on the competition circuit.

Katkus additionally serves as cinematographer right here; his determination to shoot on movie and his playful strategy to framing Danielius’s barely inelegant bulk provides significantly to the visible curiosity and texture of the image. Nothing is overstated, however the unassuming story fragments, unmoored from any strict sense of chronology, add up step by step to one thing quietly substantial and insightful.

Predominantly captured in mid and huge photographs, Silenas brings an articulate physicality to his efficiency. In his household house in Norway, Danielius is purposeful, a person who is aware of the best way to interact together with his relationships and his house. That every one modifications when he reaches Lithuania. He spends loads of time hovering awkwardly on the sting of the body, an onlooker who was as soon as a central character.

Vismante (Vismante Ruzgaite), a neighbour – and it’s hinted, a former girlfriend – blows up Danielius’s father or mother’s musical doorbell, every screeched digital tune extra grating than the final. She leaves her monumental canine Puga in his care and bustles off to run errands. However when Danielius takes the animal for a stroll, it’s Puga who takes the lead. Later he bumps into Vismante’s dad (Arvydas Dapsys) as he closes up his beachside snack and beer shack for the night. Danielius follows him round aimlessly, as if hoping to piggyback onto the older man’s sense of goal.

In one other scene, Danielius stumbles throughout a sparsely attended karaoke bar. However somewhat than settle for the invitation to hitch in, he prefers to remain outdoors and peer by way of the murky plastic sheeting that serves as a windbreak. He not is aware of the best way to navigate the once-familiar areas of his childhood.

The disconnect works each methods. It’s a small element however a notable one. As soon as Danielius reaches his former house in Lithuania, solely as soon as does a personality name him by title, after which to not his face. It’s as if they, too, have half-forgotten who he’s and the way he matches into life on this sleepy resort city.

Katkus makes a number of daring selections, a few of which work higher than others. A segue into the unconnected story of Tomas (Rokas Siaurusaitis), who cares for his ailing mom in a close-by house, is a digression too far. Different selections – a dialog that’s completely sung, a fantasy dance sequence on the seashore, a timeline that loops and repeats itself – convey a component of mischief to the story, slicing by way of the melancholy with a spark of color and glitchy unpredictability.