THE LAWYER
(ADVOKATAS)
dir. Romas Zabarauskas, 2020
97 mins. Lithuania.
In Lithuanian with English subtitles.

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 1 - 7:30PM with filmmaker Q+A
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

Zabarauskas' most recent recent feature THE LAWYER follows a corporate attorney in Belgrade named Marius (Eimutis Kvosciauskas) who becomes obsessed with a Syrian refugee (and sex-cam worker) named Ali (Dogac Yildiz). But what initially seems like an exoticized (if not predatory) fixation gives way to a muted and complex rumination on inequality within inequalities. Ali refuses to become a martyr of bourgeois respectability politics for Marius, and their encounter forces the more bourgeois man to confront the limitations of his own privileged bubble - building to a surprising third act that manages to refuse both miserablism and "love conquers all" sentimentality. Evenly sensual and unsentimental, THE LAWYER is a shrewd depiction of the contradictions inherent in a time of "human rights" for some but not all, and the hypocrisy that comes when mores around homosexuality - at least, in major urban areas - are allegedly shifting for the better.