Direktor: Romas Zabarauskas

Romas Zabarauskas

Lithuanian film director, screenwriter and producer

Born in 1990. May 31, Vilnius, Lithuania

For the last ten years, Romas Zabarauskas has been making provocative, genre-bending films underpinned by queer characters. Romas is interested in subverting the paradigm of “positive portrayal” of queerness. His heroes are never model citizens nor victims – they are humans. They fight, take drugs, question their identity, riot, fail, get involved in murders, redeem themselves and do all the passionate and tender things people do in movies.

Romas promotes his films in conjunction with social activism campaigns that address the controversial issues he confronts in the script. He uses his work to tackle issues before they go mainstream, bringing sensitive debates to a wider audience with close attention to aesthetics, music and innovative marketing. Openly gay and publicly outspoken since the beginning of his career, Romas has been widely recognized as a leading activist for LGBTQ+ equality in his home country Lithuania, an environment with plenty of inspiration for films about injustice.

Romas studied in Paris 8 University, speaks French and loves French cinema – and he turned out to be an enfant terrible. After a decade of being unsure whether he is more of a filmmaker or an activist, he has now decided to be proud of being both at the same time.

Romas' short film Porno Melodrama and subsequent features We Will Riot and You Can’t Escape Lithuania tackle the subjects of queer love, resurgent nationalism and politics. The films premiered at the Berlinale in 2011, Moscow International Film Festival in 2013 and New York’s Bushwick Film Festival in 2016 respectively, and have been showing around the world ever since.

His latest feature THE LAWYER is the first Lithuanian feature film focusing on a male same-sex romantic relationship and one of the very few fiction films about the LGBTQ+ refugee experience in Europe.

Studies

2014—2016 MA in communications (KSU, Vilnius) 

2009–2012 BA in film (Saint-Denis, Paris) 

2011—2012 Exchange year in film (Hunter College, NYC)

Books

Lithuania Comes Out: 99 LGBT+ Stories (2016, 2018)

Friendly Stories (2018)

Activism