The Activist

Set around the planning of the first LGBTQ march in Kaunas, Lithuania, one of the country’s top activists, Deividas (Elvinas Juodkazis), is assassinated. The Activist isn’t really about him though; instead, it’s about the grief, trauma, mystery, hatred, and the activism his demise provokes. Deividas worked for Rainbow Kaunas, and his co-workers debate how to maintain the safety of the protestors after his death. His boyfriend Andrius, played by Robertas Petraitis of Southern Chronicles (Ignas Miskinis, 2024) fame, finds the body in their shared apartment and hears the killer fleeing. The cops don’t care too much, so Andrius takes matters into his own hands and infiltrates an anti-queer and pro-violence neo-Nazi group. Are there any other kinds of skinheads after all?

The Activist, Romas Zabarauskas’s fifth feature film, and the final one in his queer trilogy (after 2020’s The Lawyer and 2023’s The Writer) stitches together many tones. It can be tender. It can be classically dramatic. It can be sexy. And it can be thrilling. The first few scenes embody this richly. Deividas joins the interior minister at a tense pro-LGBTQ political event that ends in less-than-peaceful protest. With no allies or supporters in sight, only anti-love bigots show up for the joint speech and announcement of the upcoming march—one of the film’s more puzzling writing decisions.

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