The 8th Annual New York Baltic Film Festival (NYBFF) presented by Scandinavia House: The Nordic Center in America returns this November with the best new films from the Baltic region! The festival’s grand finale takes place on Sunday, November 9 with the U.S. premiere of The Visitor (Svečias, dir. Vytautas Katkus, Lithuania/Norway/Sweden, 2025).
The film follows 30-year-old Danielius (Darius Šilėnas), a Lithuanian expat who has been living in Norway for over a decade. He has everything he needs — a job, a loving Norwegian wife (Hanne Mathisen Haga), a child and friends. But when his father passes away, he is forced to return to his hometown in Lithuania to sell his childhood flat. Arriving at the end of summer, the small resort town feels like a temporary retreat. Yet he quickly realizes that everything has changed. As Danielius reconnects with familiar places, old friends and lingering memories, he is confronted by a quiet sense of loneliness, which he chooses to explore rather than resist. Between farewells and fleeting moments, Danielius embraces the present — immersing himself in the town one last time before finally letting go. Dwelling on the ways place shapes personhood, the film unpicks the disorienting disconnect of returning to the place you once belonged and finding yourself a stranger.
Praised as “an appealingly offbeat debut” (Guy Lodge, Variety) and “a cinematic meditation on solitude” (Georg Szalai, THR), and winner of Best Director at the 2025 Karlovy Vary Film Festival, The Visitor offers an unhurried, gentle journey through the strange comforts of nostalgia and the meaning of home.
“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… finds both a new angle and an original means of exploring it” —Wendy Ide, ScreenDaily
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
VYTAUTAS KATKUS
Vytautas Katkus (born 1991) is an up-and-coming writer, director and cinematographer in Lithuania. He graduated from the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, Cinematography studies in 2014 and worked as DOP with a strong visual and artistic vision for short films and documentaries. In 2019 he debuted as a film director with his first short film Community Gardens at the 58th Semaine de la Critique in Cannes, while his second short film Places (2020) premiered in Venice, Orizzonti. Finally, his third short film Cherries (2022) was part of the official selection of Cannes Court Metrage. The Visitor is his debut feature film co-written with Marija Kavtaradzė, which was selected for the Next Step program in 2022 – Best Project award, as well as Les Arcs Co-Production Village in 2022 – Arte Kino development award, and Torino Feature Lab – TFL production award.
