Adam Wants to Be a Man

The harbinger of a poetic movement in Lithuanian cinema with references to the esthetics of neo-realism. Kaunas, the interwar period. A young man named Adam wanders around the city. He lives on a boat, where he listens to strange and fascinating tales of its old captain. By chance, he finds a job as a messenger at an emigration agency called Alfa. The schemes hatched by his supervisor, Dausa, and his co-worker, known as “the American,” do not interest him. He earns enough to put food on the table and dreams of traveling to an exotic country somewhere with his beloved Liucė. But Liucė catches the eye of the aging “American,” who intends to bequeath his restaurant to her. Dausa also notices her. In the end, he flees from the office, his huge debts, and from potential emigrants, and goes abroad with the girl. The captain also gets caught up in a fabricated scandal involving the sinking of a barge, as a result of which, he himself ends up at the bottom of the Neman. Adam, with all his bad luck, somehow finds himself starting over: this time, however, he is taken in by a lame port watchman; nonetheless, his future appears foggy and unsure.

Małgorzata Litwinowicz

15th New Horizons IFF Catalogue

Vytautas Žalakevičius (1930–1996) – Lithuanian film director and writer. He was the Artistic Director of the Lithuanian Film Studio (Lietuvos Kino Studija). He studied mathematics and engineering at Kaunas University for two years. From 1951 to 1956, he studied film directing at VGIK in Moscow. He shot to fame with his 1956 film Adam Wants to Be a Man. His best-known film, Nobody Wanted to Die, starring Lithuanian and Latvian actors, brought him international recognition. From 1974 to 1980, Žalakevičius was staff director at Mosfilm, albeit his Moscow period was less productive, so he returned to Lithuania, where he devoted himself to establishing an independent film industry. He also taught directing and writing as well as worked for television.

11th New Horizons IFF Catalogue

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