Tabasco (Andrius Žemaitis, 2025)

Five years ago, Andrius Žemaitis’ short or rather, featurette Alizava was one of the films that instantly won my curatorial heart. Selected as a part of the Subjective Realities program for the third edition of the Kinoskop festival, it was awarded Grand Prix, with experimental filmmaker Rouzbeh Rashidi appointed as one of the jury members. Žemaitis’ feature debut Tabasco marks a new milestone in his career, regardless of the unfortunate and primarily length-based rejections by the international festivals.

As noted in the official synopsis, it is an ‘exploration of intergenerational collective trauma and the crisis of provincial life in post-Soviet Lithuania’, but broadly speaking, it is a meditation on (childhood) memories, familial (dis)connection, and the relentless transience of time. Revolving around a homeless wanderer and ex-gardener, Rimas, the puzzling drama chronicles his journey to reunite with his estranged brother, Stasys, employing a number of magic realism-related quirks that bring to mind the work of Jan Jakub Kolski.

The hallucinatory opening scene, set in a dilapidated rural house, evokes Tarkovsky or even Tarr, with the exception of shot duration, colors and off-kilter energy suggesting inebriated abandon – we learn that the title refers to a liquid ‘pink monstrosity’ that the characters consume. And right from the get-go, Žemaitis demonstrates his keen sense of the frame composition, as well as a penchant for the ‘ruin porn’ ambiance inhabited by worn faces, although his 16mm Arriflex makes every single set, from villa interiors to a foggy bog, look enchanting, with textures emphasized and turned palpable.

The grain beautifully complements both the subtly distorted reality, and Rimas’ increasingly bizarre dreams some of which wouldn’t feel out of place in the Twin Peaks universe, with ‘tabasco’ as the equivalent of garmonbozia. Pregnant with bittersweet nostalgia, and brimming with analog paraphernalia, Rimas’ psycho-emotional quest unfolds at unhurried pace, and effortlessly haerkens back to the 20th century, appearing like a lost artifact from decades ago. Honest in its approach to the unconventional narrative, unaffected thanks to the non-professional cast, and peppered with some absurd humor for good measure, Tabasco is an arthouse delight that should not remain under the radar.