This assured feature debut from writer and director Karolis Kaupinis takes a wry look at a little-known event in late-1930s Lithuania. Anticipating the coming war, a geographer proposes the setting up of an alternative colony overseas – a backup Lithuania – to be used in the event of an invasion. This is the jumping-off point for a densely detailed, slyly comic collision between international politics and absurdity.
It’s not immediately accessible film-making, but Kaupinis uses the medium smartly: everything from the boxed-in aspect ratio to the geographer’s increasingly oppressive living arrangements nods to Lithuania’s potential plight.
