The Southern Chronicles(Pietinia Kronikas)
A film byIgnas Miškinis
A generation in motion.
Rugby fields, cassette culture, concrete neighbourhoods and first love. These images capture a generation growing up in Šiauliai at a moment when the rules of everyday life—and the country around them—were being rewritten.
Film stills courtesy of In Script · Nafta Films
Growing up while everything changes.
A restless teenager searches for strength, money and a future in the rapidly changing Lithuania of the early 1990s.
In a working-class neighbourhood of Å iauliai, 17-year-old Rimants spends his days playing rugby, listening to Eurobeat and trying to make money through the black market. Alongside his best friend MindÄ—, he is convinced that physical strength and money are what matter most in the new competitive world taking shape around them.
Then he meets Monika. Coming from a more middle-class world, she introduces Rimants to literature, culture and possibilities he has never seriously considered. Falling in love begins to challenge not only what he wants from life, but the assumptions on which he has built his identity.
12 Silver Crane Awards · Best Baltic Film at Tallinn Black Nights · Lithuania’s official submission for the 98th Academy Awards
A boy growing up. A country growing with him.
Rimants is trying to understand what kind of man he wants to become at the same moment Lithuania is discovering what kind of country it wants to be. The early 1990s bring freedom, opportunity and uncertainty in equal measure. Old structures are disappearing, new ideas of success are arriving quickly, and young people are learning to navigate a world in which money, identity and ambition suddenly seem to operate by different rules.
Rugby. Eurobeat. And whatever it takes to get ahead.
The world of The Southern Chronicles is built from the details of a particular place and generation: rugby training, cassette music, street deals, concrete apartment blocks and the distinctive slang of Å iauliai.
Rather than treating the 1990s as decoration, the film uses the period’s energy, uncertainty and humour to show how young people learned to improvise their way through a society changing almost overnight.
Then he meets someone who sees the world differently.
Monika does not simply become Rimants’ romantic interest. She represents another possible version of life—one shaped by books, culture and choices beyond the codes he has learned from the neighbourhood.
Their relationship forces Rimants to consider whether strength and money are really enough to build the future he wants.
Ignas Miškinis
Coming-of-age storytelling, social observation and the vivid cultural memory of 1990s Lithuania.
Born in Vilnius in 1978, Ignas Miškinis studied film and television directing at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre. His early short Easily and Sweetly helped draw renewed attention to a new generation of Lithuanian filmmakers, and he later became one of the country’s best-known commercial directors.
His feature work includes Diringas, Low Lights and Kings’ Shift. With The Southern Chronicles, Miškinis brings together coming-of-age storytelling, social observation, humour and the vivid cultural memory of 1990s Lithuania.
Lithuanian cinema on the big screen in Calgary.
Join us at the Calgary European Film Festival for The Southern Chronicles (Pietinia Kronikas), a funny, restless and deeply local coming-of-age story set against the rapidly changing Lithuania of the early 1990s.
Saturday, November 7, 2026.
A feature-length drama-comedy.
Presented in Lithuanian with English subtitles.
Meet the people behind the story.
Explore Rimants’ world and the creative team that brought this portrait of early-1990s Lithuania to the screen.
The world is changing. So is Rimants.
Between old habits and new possibilities, The Southern Chronicles captures the messy optimism of learning how to choose a future for yourself.