See a screening of A Goodnight Kiss (Irena) in the the 9th Annual New York Baltic Film Festival (NYBFF).

A Goodnight Kiss is an homage to a remarkable woman, Irena Veisaitė, and her unabating spirit. As Irena turns 92 in 2020, birthday greetings pour in for one of Lithuania’s wisest women, much adored in its intellectual and cultural circles. The Nazi occupation cut her childhood short at just age 13, robbing her of her birth mother and imprisoning her in a ghetto. Then came another occupation, by the Soviets, which took away her “second mother,” who had saved her from the Nazis and raised her like one of her own. Yet having survived these horrors of two of the 20th-century’s most brutal totalitarian regimes, Irena came out on the other side, believing in a life free of hatred. 

Set in Vilnius, once dubbed the Jerusalem of the North, the film crafts a nuanced portrait of Irena as a testimony to her humanity and courage to live and forgive. Following Irena’s passing later in 2020, Giedrė Žickytė found new ways to tell her story, drawing on unseen testimonies and rare archives such as clandestine photos captured inside a ghetto. Woven into the narrative is music by her lifelong friend, Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, who dedicated his acclaimed piano piece Für Alina to Irena as a gesture of solace, echoing Irena’s own experience of motherhood and the longing she felt for her daughter Alina during the years they were apart.

In today’s fracturing world, Irena’s wisdom may be the guiding light we need.

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