Maža išpažintis / The Small Confession

Arūnas is 18 and lives in Klaipėda. His father drives him crazy with the older man’s memories of the war and sayings like "Only the past can build the future“. His mother has just left the family to start a new life as a painter. At school a classmate who sympathises with the communist youth organisation denounces him to the principal. His buddy Benas has already been kicked out of school – he now works as a rescue swimmer and sings mutinous songs. On a boat trip together, Arūnas meets a young blonde named Rasa, but he seems not to know exactly how to take her friendliness … The film openly explores the generational conflict and the accession of the younger generation to replace the elder. Popular singer Vytautas Kernagis worked on the film but it was not just his presence that made it one of the most-watched films from Lithuania in the 1970s. Looking back today, film critic Izolda Keidošiūtė summed it up by saying that audiences were not used to films like that, which seemed to live and breathe freedom.