Slow could be described as a sexy film about asexuality. Written and directed by Marija Kavtaradze, the soulful, Lithuanian drama depicts, dissects, and dismantles what is expected of romantic relationships. Elena (Greta Grinevičiūtė), a dancer whose overflowing emotions are paraded in her natural movements, lands in the bed of seductive Dovydas (Kęstutis Cicėnas), only for him to reveal at the key moment that he’s asexual. While Dovydas seeks intimacy with other humans, he isn’t sexually attracted to any of them, and Elena, who’s head over heels, must navigate a new kind of dating challenge. “Maybe you don’t like me,” says Elena. “I do,” replies Dovydas. “It’s why I wanted to tell you.”

“What most people appreciate about the film is that it’s not sexual but very intimate,” says Kavtaradze over a video call from LA in April. “He’s a romantic person who wants a relationship. He’s not repulsed by sex; he’s just not interested in it.” The 32-year-old Lithuanian filmmaker describes to me the movie cliche of couples kissing and the camera then cutting to them in bed after fornication. “What he’s interested in is physical touches and hugs. It’s rare to see intimacy on screen that doesn’t turn into sex.”

Elena is teaching a class for deaf children when she comes across Dovydas, a sign language interpreter whose humour and flirtatious energy immediately has her swooning. Once Dovydas reveals his asexuality, Elena lines up questions that an audience unfamiliar with the subject matter may also share. (To her confusion, he masturbates; he insists it isn’t spurred by sexual attraction.) Kavtaradze, too, was learning about asexuality before writing the script, hence much of the story is told from the perspective of Elena, not Dovydas.

“I tried to balance it,” says Kavtaradze. “To be honest, it was easier for me to imagine Elena’s position in the relationship. But I didn’t want to put in details about asexuality just to educate people. That comes from Dovydas doing something, or her asking him about it.” Her research process involved a great deal of reading, watching, and emailing with asexual individuals. “One person told me, ‘There’ll be asexual people that really hate it, but that’s fine, because it’s impossible to make a film for everyone.’ In a weird way, that was calming to me.”

While much is made of whether, for example, straight actors can play gay roles, Kavtaradze didn’t cast an asexual actor as Dovydas. “Our country is so small,” she says. “It’s around three million. And a lot of actors don’t want to be out about their sexuality.” How was it, then, for Kavtaradze and Cicėnas to construct Dovydas when neither of them are asexual? “We talked less about asexuality, and more about his background with it,” she says. “When was the moment Dovydas really told himself that he’s asexual? How did it affect his life and past relationships? When did he feel comfortable telling others? The research wasn’t the main thing. Like any person, the character had so many parts.”

Marking Kavtaradze’s follow-up to her debut feature Summer Survivors, Slow won the Best Director prize at Sundance and is certainly, for many people, the only film they’ve seen to seriously and sensitively depict asexuality on screen. Amidst a dating culture dominated by apps, icks, and ghosting, Slow is also an outlier that suggests patience when it comes to understanding a potential partner’s needs or waiting for them to adapt to yours.

“The word ‘slow’ has so much romance to it,” says Kavtaradze. “But the film’s title is also about the beginning of falling in love with someone, and how time flows differently when you’re together. There’s a lot of chances after he tells her that he’s asexual for her to decide, ‘OK, let’s not go further.’ But because they’re still attracted to each other like magnets, she goes for it. If they were thinking about red flags, their love story wouldn’t have happened. I don’t believe in red flags.”

Asexuality is, of course, a broad term, and Slow doesn’t cover, for example, sex-repulsed asexuality. In fact, Slow includes sex scenes – or, rather, attempts between Elena and Dovydas, the latter eager to satisfy his partner’s desires. Whereas the pair’s tender hugs and caresses are natural, efforts at intercourse are fuelled by tension and paranoia; when Dovydas proposes that she sleeps with men on the side, she’s devastated by the suggestion. “I wanted to show their reality,” says Kavtaradze. “If we stay with them in romantic moments, we have to see how they actually feel in the sexual moments. It’s awkward and they don’t feel good.”

Kavtaradze admits that the film’s open-ended conclusion came about through editing, as did other aspects of presenting a relationship with no obvious solution. Shot on 16mm, the grainy cinematography hones in on the subtlest of facial expressions for clues into their hidden emotions, or sometimes even physical gestures – the manner in which Elena sways her body while dancing, or the emphatic finger movement when Dovydas performs sign language. Unsurprisingly, Kavtaradze has heard a variety of opinions from viewers.

“One person told me, ‘There’ll be asexual people that really hate it, but that’s fine, because it’s impossible to make a film for everyone’” – Marija Kavtaradze

“Both of these characters are neither right nor wrong,” says Kavtaradze. “But sometimes audiences are very mad at her, or mad at him.” She cites a scene in which Elena furiously catches Dovydas masturbating. “Some people think, ‘How can she be so judgemental?’ Others tend to understand him more. It’s clear that if they found out certain things earlier, they could avoid certain conflicts.”

As for responses from asexual viewers, Kavtaradze notes that they’ve mostly been positive, albeit not universally. “Travelling through festivals, I’ve met people who are asexual, or their partner is asexual, and they’ve shared stories and have accepted the film beautifully,” she says. “But also there have been asexual people who criticised the fact that the film is more from Elena’s perspective. I’ve received both nice and critical words.

“I knew for a fact that it’s impossible to represent the whole community, or for every person to feel really well-represented. I was worrying about it at the beginning. I had to let it go, and accept that I could only tell the story of one person. Like any sexuality, asexuality is such a wide spectrum. It’s really hard to find two people who feel the same way about the same thing.”

Slow is out in UK and Irish cinemas on May 24