Zero. Lilac Lithuania

The film tells three stories that tangle into each other over a single day. One belongs to an undertaker who has lost everything at the casino and is told by a ruthless gang to repay what he owes by midnight. One belongs to a young soldier who goes absent without leave to find his girlfriend. The third belongs to a group of car thieves with no aim beyond feeding a drug habit. Emilis Vėlyvis works with a sharp tongue, black humour and hard images, and the film found a cult place because it was unusual for Lithuanian cinema at the time. Its construction is close to the post-Tarantino pattern: intersecting lines, violence, and chance doing the deciding. The record’s summary reads like promotional copy and makes none of the three lines intelligible.