Southern Chronicles

It’s the early 1990s, and independent Lithuania is in its infancy just as Ignas Miškinis’s protagonist in The Southern Chronicles, Rimantas (Džiugas Grinys), is coming of age in the Lithuanian town (or now, the country’s fourth-largest city) of Šiauliai. The Southern Chronicles, with a script by Eglė Vertelytė, is based on a semi-autobiographical book by Rimantas Kmita – and the film’s winding, novel-esque narrative calls to mind stories like Catcher in the Rye, where the lessons learned along the way make up the story’s true impact. The Lithuanian-Estonian co-production, whose cinematic setting feels like a glossy version of the post-Soviet 1990s, also scooped the top prize in the Tallin Black Nights Baltic Film Competition.

Southern Chronicles is a coming-of-age film about how life's defining moments arise from coincidences and can lead to situations that feel utterly directionless. At the same time, it is a heartwarming and humorous portrait of what it was like to be a teenager in a small Lithuanian town in the 1990s, shaped by a youth culture influenced by Michael Jordan, Metallica, rap, and Enigma.