‘The Visitor’ review: Lithuanian debut takes a fresh approach to the issue of migration

Dir: Vytautas Katkus. Lithuania/Norway/Sweden. 2025. 115mins.

The theme of migration is so thoroughly mined in arthouse cinema, it is unusual to find a picture that has something fresh to say. But The Visitor, the impressive debut film from Lithuanian cinematographer and director Vytautas Katkus, finds both a new angle and an original means of exploring it. Rather than examine the experience of being a newcomer in a strange country, the film unpicks the disorientating disconnect of returning to the place that once was home and finding yourself a stranger. 

Quietly substantial and insightful

A wry puzzle of a picture, in which not all of the pieces slot together, The Visitor follows Danielius (Darius Silenas), who has made a life in Norway with his wife and baby son. Following his father’s death, he returns to his childhood home in a small Lithuanian seaside resort to sell his parent’s flat. But once there he cannot bring himself to leave, caught up in the melancholy process of renavigating his early memories.

The Visitor is the latest title to emerge from Lithuania’s small but prolific film community: it is co-written with Marija Kavtaradze (director of the Sundance 2023 prize-winner Slow) and edited by Laurynas Bareisa (director of Drowning Dry), Katkus also served as cinematographer on Lithuania’s 2024 Locarno Golden Leopard winner Toxic, directed by Saule Bliuvaite (who has a supporting role in this film). Katkus’s previous directing experience includes short films Community Gardens (2019), which premiered in Critics’ Week at Cannes; Places (2020), which launched in Venice; and Cherries (2022), which also played in Cannes. The Visitor announces him as a distinctive new voice, who should find a natural home on the festival circuit.

Katkus also serves as cinematographer here; his decision to shoot on film and his playful approach to framing Danielius’s slightly inelegant bulk adds considerably to the visual interest and texture of the picture. Nothing is overstated, but the unassuming story fragments, unmoored from any strict sense of chronology, add up gradually to something quietly substantial and insightful.

Predominantly captured in mid and wide shots, Silenas brings an articulate physicality to his performance. In his family home in Norway, Danielius is purposeful, a man who knows how to engage with his relationships and his space. That all changes when he reaches Lithuania. He spends a lot of time hovering awkwardly on the edge of the frame, an onlooker who was once a central character.

Vismante (Vismante Ruzgaite), a neighbour – and it is hinted, a former girlfriend – blows up Danielius’s parent’s musical doorbell, each screeched electronic tune more grating than the last. She leaves her enormous dog Puga in his care and bustles off to run errands. But when Danielius takes the animal for a walk, it is Puga who takes the lead. Later he bumps into Vismante’s dad (Arvydas Dapsys) as he closes up his beachside snack and beer shack for the evening. Danielius follows him around aimlessly, as if hoping to piggyback onto the older man’s sense of purpose.

In another scene, Danielius stumbles across a sparsely attended karaoke bar. But rather than accept the invitation to join in, he prefers to stay outside and peer through the murky plastic sheeting that serves as a windbreak. He no longer knows how to navigate the once-familiar spaces of his childhood.

The disconnect works both ways. It is a small detail but a notable one. Once Danielius reaches his former home in Lithuania, only once does a character call him by name, and then not to his face. It is as though they, too, have half-forgotten who he is and how he fits into life in this sleepy resort town.

Katkus makes several bold choices, some of which work better than others. A segue into the unconnected story of Tomas (Rokas Siaurusaitis), who cares for his ailing mother in a nearby apartment, is a digression too far. Other choices – a conversation that is entirely sung, a fantasy dance sequence on the beach, a timeline that loops and repeats itself – bring an element of mischief to the story, cutting through the melancholy with a spark of colour and glitchy unpredictability.