Maria enters her father’s life as a stranger, seeking traces of herself.

Maria lives in a world where intimacy comes at a price. However, the bitter void in her life does not yield to any effort to forget it. The father she has never known has remained a shadow in her life, accumulating questions, shame and longing over the years. One day, Maria decides to break this silence.

Under an assumed name, she joins Andrius’ drawing class. The man lives a quiet life as an art teacher and has no idea that one of his students carries a trace of his own past. Maria looks at him from a distance like a picture in which she hopes to recognise something of herself. Each encounter adds a new shade to the portrait, but makes it increasingly difficult to reveal the truth. The closer she gets, the less clear it becomes whether she is looking for her father, a culprit, or herself.

Sometimes the hardest part is not finding the person who disappeared, but deciding what to do when you meet them. Danielius Minkevičius’ “Oblivion” moves with smouldering intimacy along the wounds that time does not heal, but teaches to hide. This is a story of a legacy that is passed on not in wealth or blood, but in the silence that one generation leaves for the next to bear.

Elise Jagomägi