Documentary film, 2016
Director: Linas Mikuta / 42 min
The film
In a remote corner of rural Lithuania, two men share a roof, a daily grind, and almost nothing else. The father – worn down by monotony and a life that never quite opened up – sees his deaf-mute adult son as a burden, a failure, a problem with no solution. The son, silent but not absent, moves through the same landscape reading books, climbing trees, stepping aside from the cruelties of farm life.
DEAD EARS is a documentary about the distance between two people who are supposed to know each other – and how that distance becomes visible only when you look long enough.
The score
Director Linas Mikuta brought me in to compose the score for a film built almost entirely on what goes unsaid. The silence of the son is not emptiness – it’s interiority, depth, a parallel world running beneath the surface. The score had to find the sound of that. Not to sentimentalise the drama or underline the conflict, but to hold open the space between two people who can’t reach each other – and let the viewer feel what neither character can express.
Recognition
DEAD EARS won the main prize in the feature documentary category at FIDBA – the Buenos Aires International Documentary Festival – and screened at Festival dei Popoli in Florence, one of the world’s oldest documentary festivals.
Composers: Povilas Vaitkevičius, Benas Šarka
Director: Linas Mikuta / Production: Monoklis (LT)
Film director Linas Mikuta:
“I reached out to Povilas after remembering a live performance of his that I once attended. Even then, I sensed a certain narrative power embedded within the sound. In the case of the film Cold Ears, there was also a strong sense of urgency, as unexpected circumstances left us with an extremely tight deadline. Nevertheless, everything was resolved, and I am very pleased with the film’s sound design.”
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