Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė

Born in 1983, Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė holds a Master's degree in Documentary Film from Goldsmiths, University of London and a Bachelor's degree in Cinematography and Theatre Directing from the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre. She now lives and works in Vilnius, Lithuania. Her artistic practice spans the fields of video, theatre and the visual arts. In her work, she explores the gap between objective reality and imagined reality, while playfully questioning overly anthropocentric ways of thinking. Her recent documentary film-essay Acid Forest (2018) won a prize at the Locarno International Film Festival, and was shown at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., Lincoln Center in New York and the American Film Institute Festival in Los Angeles. Her opera-performance, co-created with Lina Lapelytė and Vaiva Grainytė, was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art in 2019. After an international tour, Sun and sea (2017) was presented for the first time in France at the Festival d'Automne 2023.