The Zero Trilogy

The trilogy at a glance

• Zero. Lilac Lithuania (Zero. Alyvinė Lietuva, 2006) — feature debut, 96 min
• Zero 2 (2010) — expanded sequel, four years later
• Zero 3 (2017) — completing entry, after Redirected and the international detour

All three films are written and directed by Vėlyvis. All three are Lithuanian-language. All three are organised around small ensembles operating in Vilnius's criminal underworld, with overlapping characters and shared visual grammar. Together with Redirected (2014) and The Generation of Evil (2021), they form the bulk of Vėlyvis's feature filmography.

Zero. Lilac Lithuania (2006)

Vėlyvis's first feature arrived at a moment when Lithuanian commercial cinema was still rebuilding from 1990s industry collapse. Zero. Lilac Lithuania — the full title in English-language databases — is the work that established Vėlyvis's method. The film is set in Vilnius. The structure is non-linear, with multiple plot lines that intersect over the course of the runtime. The tone alternates between violent and comic, often in the same scene. The visual reference points are Tarantino and the early Coen brothers; the actual texture, however, is specifically Lithuanian.

What Zero established, and what every subsequent Vėlyvis film has built on:

• The Vilnius criminal world as a recognisable, specific milieu — not a generic post-Soviet backdrop.
• The ensemble approach — multiple characters carrying their own subplots, distributing screen weight away from a single lead.
• The post-Soviet location vocabulary — Khrushchev-era apartment blocks, half-abandoned industrial sites, agrarian peripheries — used without nostalgic framing.
• The bilingual register — Lithuanian dialogue with Russian-language passages where the script requires it.

Zero's domestic reception was substantial. Lithuanian audiences responded to seeing their own city, their own language, and their own criminal-economy texture rendered in a register that recognisably borrowed from international genre cinema without subordinating itself to Hollywood conventions. The film created the audience that would later sustain Zero 2 and Zero 3.

Zero 2 (2010)

The second film extended the universe. Same milieu, expanded scope, four years of audience development behind it. The narrative scaffolding became more ambitious; the cast expanded; the production values rose to match the financial confidence Vėlyvis had built. Zero 2 confirmed that the original Zero had not been a one-off — that there was a sustainable domestic audience for Lithuanian-language commercial crime cinema, and that Vėlyvis could continue developing the universe over multiple films.

Zero 2 also worked as a kind of feasibility study for what came next. The combination of (a) demonstrated commercial viability, (b) established Lithuanian crew base, and (c) Vėlyvis's now-proven ability to manage ensemble crime narratives at expanded scale created the conditions for the English-language step Redirected would represent. Without Zero 2, there is no reason to assume that financiers would have backed the larger Lithuanian-British co-production that Redirected required.

Redirected (2014) — the trilogy's English-language detour

Between Zero 2 (2010) and Zero 3 (2017), Vėlyvis directed Redirected, his English-language debut. Redirected is not part of the Zero trilogy in narrative terms — different characters, different setup, no continuity — but it shares structural DNA. The same ensemble approach. The same use of Vilnius and Lithuanian peripheries as deliberate location work. The same Tarantino-influenced visual confidence. The same willingness to be violent and funny in the same scene.

What Redirected added to Vėlyvis's filmography was the cross-cultural register. Where Zero and Zero 2 worked entirely within Lithuanian language and reference, Redirected dropped four British characters into the same Vilnius landscape and made the entire film about the friction. The technique was new for Vėlyvis but the underlying location and ensemble grammar was continuous with what the Zero films had been doing.

For the full breakdown of Redirected including cast, production, box office and ending, see our complete guide.

Zero 3 (2017)

After the Redirected detour, Vėlyvis returned to the Zero universe with Zero 3 — completing the trilogy. The film confirmed that Redirected had not been the start of a permanent English-language pivot. Vėlyvis remained a Lithuanian-language director whose international productions were exceptions, not the new norm. The Zero universe remained his primary creative home.

Zero 3 also benefited from the infrastructure Redirected had helped reinforce. The Lithuanian crew base had grown across the 2010s. Equipment, post-production, and location familiarity had all improved. Zero 3 looks and sounds like a more substantial production than Zero. Lilac Lithuania, partly because the country's film-production capacity had genuinely advanced in the eleven years between the first and third films.

What comes after — Generation of Evil (2021)

Vėlyvis's most recent feature as of the mid-2020s is The Generation of Evil (2021, sometimes listed in international databases as 2022). The film moves into darker thriller territory and confirms that his work continues to evolve within the broad commercial-genre register — different texture, same underlying interest in Lithuanian space, criminal economies, and ensemble construction.

The trilogy form has been completed; Vėlyvis remains active.

How to watch the Zero trilogy

International streaming availability of the Zero trilogy is significantly patchier than for Redirected. The films are Lithuanian-language, which limits their licensing footprint outside Baltic and adjacent markets. Within Lithuania and via regional Baltic streaming platforms, the trilogy has been available across various windows. Outside Lithuania, viewers usually need to look to specialist platforms or to physical media imports.

This availability gap is one of the operational reasons Redirected remains the most internationally accessible Vėlyvis film. Viewers approaching the director's work from outside Lithuania typically enter via Redirected and work their way into the Zero trilogy from there, when they can find it.

Reading order

For viewers approaching Vėlyvis cold, the standard recommendation is to start with the Zero trilogy in order — Zero (2006), Zero 2 (2010), Zero 3 (2017) — and then watch Redirected (2014) as the bridge between the second and third Zero films. This order gives you the Lithuanian-language grounding before the English-language cross-cultural step, which is roughly the order Vėlyvis made the films in.

For viewers approaching Vėlyvis via Redirected — which is most non-Lithuanian viewers — the natural path is backwards: watch Redirected, then locate Zero. Lilac Lithuania, then Zero 2, then Zero 3, then the recent Generation of Evil. This works almost as well; the films are not strictly sequential, and each can be entered independently.

See also

• Emilis Vėlyvis profile — career arc and style
• Redirected (2014) synopsis
• Redirected complete guide
• Lithuanian cinema guide
• Lithuanian film industry primer
• Baltic cinema's 2010s renaissance
• External: Wikipedia entry on Emilis Vėlyvis

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