Velta, a schoolteacher, finds out that her son’s poorly written exam may jeopardise his dream of attending a prestigious university abroad. What will she do to secure her child’s success?

Director Burkšaitis twists the usual coming-of-age setting – a high-school – to focus on what an adult, not a teenager, would learn from these trials. Caring deeply for her son, Velta relies on desperate measures – cheating, lying, even blackmail – in a film which brilliantly emulates the codes of the thriller genre (the ticking clock, the secret phone calls). This emotional rollercoaster doesn’t disregard the moral ambiguity of it all. Like his previous short On Purpose (2023), where a little girl hurries to find help for her injured dog, Left-Handed Pen is about “correcting a mistake”, with a “lot of anxiety and urgency in them”, according to Burkšaitis. “This kind of plot dynamics intrigues me”. This film won the Best Short Award at the latest Lithuanian national film awards – the 15th Silver Crane Awards Ceremony.

Jury statement: Time is precious here. With the suspense of a thriller and a precisely composed ensemble, this film doesn’t lose a second to let us witness an intimate story of hope and despair – and the work of a European director from whom we hope to see more in the future.