Renovation

True renovation begins inside. Ilona is about to turn thirty, and her life seems to be heading in the right direction — she works as a translator, is moving into a new apartment with her boyfriend Matas, and is looking forward to a future together. But when a surprising renovation of the house begins, not only cracks in the walls are revealed, but also Ilona's inner doubts, which are intensified by her encounter with Ukrainian worker Oleg. Their growing mutual attraction deepens her uncertainty: does she really want to settle down and start a family? Lithuanian director Gabrielė Urbonaitė's feature debut draws on precisely observed situations and offers a sensitive reflection on millennial anxiety and the magic of unexpected encounters in a life surrounded by the scaffolding of social assumptions. This civil but also stylistic film is at the same time an existential statement of a generation struggling with the shadows of the Soviet past at a time when a new threat of war is forming near the Lithuanian border.