La Pietà
La Pietà isn’t the first slow-moving Lithuanian feature-length documentary with a glacial subject. And, strangely, I hope it won’t be the last.
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The Baltics have a strong tradition of Arctic and glacier documentaries. The Estonian Ice State from 1970 (featuring a score by Arvo Pärt) romanticizes the 13th Soviet Antarctic expedition; the Latvian Nordic Light: A Composer’s Diary follows a composer’s Arctic circle symphony; and the Lithuanian Woman and the Glacier, directed by one of the most notable names in the Baltic poetic documentary movement, Audrius Stonys, finds a curious character in Ausra Revutaite, a Lithuanian scientist turned recluse who has spent 30 years of her life on the Kazakhstan-Kyrgyzstan border studying a glacier. That means La Pietà, Pepe Andreu and Rafa Molés’s film competing in the Doc@PÖFF Baltic Competition category, isn’t the first slow-moving Lithuanian feature-length documentary with a glacial subject. And, strangely, I hope it won’t be the last. Glacier documentaries should be, well, glacial—and few countries make higher quality slow (poetic) documentaries than Lithuania.