A Goodnight Kiss (Irena)

Irena Veisaitė (1928–2020): a survivor of the Shoah, literary scholar, and passionate humanist. Through personal encounters, moving interviews, and historical archive material, the film tells the story of a life marked by loss and persecution but also by an unshakeable optimism that endured even through the darkest of times. When the Nazis occupied Lithuania, Irena’s Jewish mother was murdered. The young Irena survived the Kaunas ghetto thanks to a courageous Christian woman who took her in, thereby risking her own life. Eventually, Irena also lost her foster mother, who was deported to a Soviet gulag. Yet instead of hatred and revenge, empathy and reconciliation shaped the rest of her life. As a scholar of German studies and theatre studies, she dedicated her life to fostering understanding between people and cultures. The Lithuanian director Giedrė Žickytė accompanies her protagonist with profound intimacy through the final years of her life: amidst books, memories, encounters with young people, and heartfelt conversations with friends such as the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt.