Amber washes up on the shore after a storm. Just like everything else worth collecting.

Arūnas is an ageing fisherman on the Lithuanian coast. Yet every year, the fish are becoming scarcer. His second occupation is older than his first: after a storm, he goes down to the beach to search for amber, as has been done in these parts for centuries. During the long winter, when he cannot go out to sea, he sits at his kitchen table polishing the pieces he has found into jewellery, for which there are also fewer and fewer buyers. Amber was once the backbone of the local industry and tourism. Now it is one man’s way of filling his days and preserving his memories.

Francesco Rufini, a Vilnius-based documentary filmmaker with a background in anthropology, is also the film’s cinematographer, and his first feature-length film stems from a simple idea: amber is a time capsule containing a moment from millions of years ago. The film does the same with a single person. “After the Storm” is a film about a time that cannot be reclaimed, but which can be picked up and held up to the light. This superbly told visual story takes the viewer on a journey where time takes on a meaning all of its own.

Mikk Granström