I saw this at the Cleveland International Film Festival with a Lithuanian in a theater full of Lithuanians. Ruta is a young girl who fled to America with her mother right after WWII and the Communist occupation of Lithuania. She returned to Germany hoping to reunite with her beloved father, who is was unable to escape Communism and is under control of the KGB.
The story isn't bad, and could have made a good movie. But the direction is slow, distracting, and there are long pauses and focus on irrelevant people and objects that just detract from the story. The overwhelming theme is people smoking. There are actually scenes that focus solely on an ashtray and cigarettes flicking ash. These fill the screen for significant time, and it's as though the director needed to fill time.
When the lights came up there were people asleep or close to it. It was beyond the stamina of most everyone to endure the long, lingering scenes where nothing happened.
Stay away.
The story isn't bad, and could have made a good movie. But the direction is slow, distracting, and there are long pauses and focus on irrelevant people and objects that just detract from the story. The overwhelming theme is people smoking. There are actually scenes that focus solely on an ashtray and cigarettes flicking ash. These fill the screen for significant time, and it's as though the director needed to fill time.
When the lights came up there were people asleep or close to it. It was beyond the stamina of most everyone to endure the long, lingering scenes where nothing happened.
Stay away.