Summer, at a Lithuanian lakeshore. On vacation with her parents, 17-year-old Sangaile, by local tradition, goes to an air show to watch the pilots’ acrobatics. There she immediately attracts the attention of Auste, a girl her own age who is working as a hostess for the occasion, and who approaches her immediately. Sangaile, timid and tortured, and Auste, extroverted and cheerful, slowly fall in love.

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A love story between two teenagers under the Lithuanian sun, winner of the Best Director award at Sundance, with a soundtrack by Air member Jean-Benoît Dunckel: Sangaile, the second film by Alanté Kavaïté, seems to have come out of nowhere to be launched onto the world stage. But the question is why. Alarmingly sluggish and simplistic, this film may be modern in its choice of couple but it is soulless thanks to a stereotypical screenplay – a suicidal teen learns to love life with the help of a nonconformist artist. The director, whose debut project Fissures, starring Emilie Dequenne, came and went unnoticed, spends a lot of time on close-ups of the gorgeous scenery, the characters, and the decor, but she can’t hide the fact that Kavaïté’s main character is boring and badly played by her star.