Tomas Vengris is a Lithuanian-American filmmaker based between Riga and Vilnius. He earned his B.A. from Columbia University in New York City and an M.F.A. in Directing from the American Film Institute. His debut feature, Motherland, won multiple international awards, including the European Audience Award at ArteKino, and was shortlisted for the 2020 European Film Awards. His second feature, Five & a Half Love Stories in an Apartment in Vilnius, won Best Film in the Rebels With A Cause competition at the PÖFF Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival. Tomas has worked as an editor under several internationally acclaimed filmmakers, including Terrence Malick and Kelly Reichardt. He is currently working on his third feature, Barracuda — a true-crime romance set in Lithuania’s criminal underworld of the 1980s and 1990s.

Winter in Mazunte [co-written with Žanete Skarule] — Alma abandons her life in the Baltics to seek meaning among the gurus, drugs, raves, and cuddle-parties of Oaxaca, Mexico, but when things get serious, the facade of love and inclusion crumbles, and Alma must confront herself and what she is really seeking.