Vytautas Katkus Feature Director Debut on Solitude

If you haven’t followed the rise of Lithuanian cinema on the global film festival circuit in recent years, you may not know the name of young filmmaker and cinematographer Vytautas Katkus – yet. But when the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF) recently unveiled that his feature directorial debut, The Visitor, would world premiere as part of the Crystal Globe Competition of its 59th edition, the consensus among insiders of the independent and arthouse film scene was that this amounted to a major coup for the Czech fest!

“It’s the end of summer. Danielius, a new father in his mid-30s, leaves his family in Norway and travels to his native Lithuania to sell his parents’ flat,” reads a plot description for The Visitor. “He tries to reconnect with old friends, but the strong bond he once had with them is now broken. Instead of rushing back to his young family to escape the deafening loneliness, he decides to stay, allowing himself to be guided by his solitude.”

The KVIFF website promises a meditation on the human condition. “Time seems to have stopped completely in a world which lights up the fragility of the human soul and images of a home that is no longer ours,” it says.

The cast is led by Darius Šilėnas, Vismantė Ruzgaitė, and Arvydas Dapšys. The Visitor world premieres in KVIFF’s Crystal Globe Competition on Monday, July 7.

Born in 1991, Katkus has twice won the award for best young director of photography from the Lithuanian Association of Directors of Photography. In 2019, his first short film, Collective Gardens, screened in the Cannes Critics’ Week program, followed by his second short, Places, premiering in the 2020 Venice Film Festival’s Horizons program. His third short, Cherries, in 2022, was selected for the Cannes Film Festival.

His cinematography on various Lithuanian features, including Marija Kavtaradze’s Summer Survivors and Johatsu from directors Lina Luzyte and Nerijus Milerius, has also turned heads in recent years. And at the Locarno Film Festival last year, Saulė Bliuvaitė’s Toxic, on which Katkus was the director of photography, won the fest’s Golden Leopard, its top award. 

It’s no surprise then that Katkus’ debut as a feature director, produced by Marija Razgutė and Brigita Beniušytė, was a popular ticket heading into Karlovy Vary 2025, which kicked off on Friday and runs through July 12. Oh, and did I mention that he served as director of photography on the movie and co-wrote the screenplay with his friend Marija Kavtaradze, who was just mentioned a moment ago?

Plus, the editor of the film is none other than Lithuanian director Laurynas Bareiša, whose second feature, Drowning Dry, was Lithuania’s 2025 Oscar submission in the best international feature film category. (The same was true for his debut feature Pilgrims, which won the Horizons section award for best film at the Venice Film Festival 2021). Totem Films is handling sales for The Visitor.

Katkus took time to talk to THR about the film, the importance of solitude, why he likes shooting unusual angles and using non-traditional framing, and his future plans.

Vytautas Katkus, courtesy of KVIFF 

The idea for The Visitor came from issues partly explored in his shorts and other inspirations. “There are a lot of small details, and The Visitor is the combination of these small details,” Katkus tells THR. “There are personal experiences, a lot of experiences from making short movies – things I was thinking about while making the short movies, and that I wanted to explore more.”

The initial idea Katkus and Kavtaradze had was to write three different stories talking about the same topic. Soon, they realized they had to instead focus on one narrative. “We looked for the possibility to create one story in one universe, and our focus was to talk about loneliness or maybe solitude in a way that is not negative,” Katkus explains. “We wanted to show that you sometimes need to have it. And you have to understand that right now you need to have and enjoy it, and how to enjoy it. We tried to remember our personal stories and our friends’ stories, so it became a kind of mosaic.”

Katkus clearly likes to create an atmosphere and give his viewers room to come away from the movie with their own lessons and interpretations. “I really want to give the viewer the possibility to explore layers and think about their own feelings,” he tells THR. “I know what I want to say, but I don’t want it to be quite straightforward, but more open. If 100 people watch one movie, it is a very different movie for each of them.”

Nostalgia is a recurring theme of The Visitor, though. “There are a lot of nostalgic moments, but I didn’t want to make a very nostalgic movie,” the filmmaker highlights. For example, Danielius is enjoying the end of the summer season and seems to want to hold on to it just a little bit longer. “In his head, he knows he can come back, but he still wants to try to find this kind of joy or happiness of previous times.”

Remember how Seinfeld has often been called “a show about nothing” because it concentrates on trivial parts of everyday life? Katkus’ approach is similar. “There is a narrative in The Visitor, but it is not a story, but a narrative by emotion,” he explains. “It’s more like a kaleidoscope.”

Katkus’ camera work tends to feature unusual angles and framing. Where does that come from? “As a cinematographer, I really like to prepare as much as possible,” he tells THR. “But at the same time, I really like to change things up a bit or be open to something that may happen in front of the camera. I also really want to give the actors as much freedom as possible. I really don’t like to light the scene and put down marks and tell them, ‘You have to stand on this mark and look to this side’.” Lighting, camera and other things “may be beautiful, but the energy from the actors won’t work,” he explains. “So I really want to give them freedom, and I then try to catch moments with the camera and adjust to the actors, not vice versa.”

With that approach, the production team may not stick to planned choreographies and other prepped things. “But this kind of documentary style or reality check in a movie really moves me.”

Katkus has a busy Karlovy Vary in front of him. In addition to The Visitor in the main competition lineup, he also served as the director of photography on Gabrielė Urbonaitė’s Renovation, which is more of a chamber piece and screens in the Proxima Competition of the fest.

If you are a Katkus fan and wonder if he plans to keep writing and directing, you will like the answer. “I have some ideas,” he tells THR. He doesn’t have details yet, but shares: “I have something that I’m trying to write right now. I’m trying to find the right approach for the idea. And Marija [Kavtaradze] is involved.”