Cherries
2022 · 15m · Lithuania
Directed by Vytautas Katkus
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, family
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
On a hot summer day, a recently retired father invites his son to help pick cherries — in no hurry to finish, as he tries to catch up with him.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A father-son cherry-picking afternoon sounds like the setup for a greeting card, and Katkus somehow resists every sentimental trap—the film's refusal to manufacture a moment of connection is exactly what makes the distance between them feel real.
Katkus positions this within a lineage of Eastern European intimate cinema—Tarkovsky's attention to duration, the patient observation of Haneke—where the quotidian becomes ceremonial through formal restraint and compositional precision.
The film's entire emotional register lives in the decision to stay wide and static while the father and son move through the frame—no close-ups to telegraph feeling, just two figures in a landscape learning how to be together again through unrushed time and fruit.