Gabriel Sandu (b.1988) is a multidisciplinary theater and film artist, passionate about the docu-fiction genre. He often uses investigative journalism tools to document the themes of his creations, later resorting to fiction to explore new performative dimensions. His theatre plays have been translated into English, French, Hungarian, Portuguese, and Greek, and his performances have been selected in several national and international festivals. His first short fiction film, Dislocated, was selected for the ZFR competition at the Transilvania International Film Festival 2022. His show Enmity v2.0, produced at Teatrelli in Bucharest, has been presented in the International Theatre Festival Sibiu (FITS) 2022, and Trauma Kink from Teatrul Dramaturgilor Romani has been selected in Synergy International Theater Festival from Novi Sad and will be presented in 2023 at Riverside Studios, in London.
Currently, Gabriel is developing several documentary and fiction film projects.
His work spans the spectrum of religious interference in artistic freedom of expression or in the human rights of marginalised groups, such as the LGBTQ community. Titles such as ”My Father, the Priest”, ”Poor Iulia” or ”Forgot” have been produced in various venues across the country, from national theatres to independent spaces. As his choice of topics address societal events, using the research through journalistic instruments and at a latter stage fictionalization for dramatic purpose, the final result more often falls into the docu-fiction genre.
Both the plays he wrote and the shows he directed have been showcased in national festivals and won several awards. ”I forgot” (Uitasem), which fictionalise the real case of a Romanian boy raised by his mother to believe he is the reincarnation of Jesus Christ, was nominated for best play Focus Drama Awards in 2018 and won the jury prize for best acting performances at Bucharest Fringe Festival in 2020. ”Poor Julia” has won the first prize in Bacău Monodrame and ”My Father, the Priest” was nominated for best play of the year at Bucharest Fringe Festival.
In July 2018, the play “Who called the fascists to our theater?” was read in Catalan at Sala Beckett in Barcelona, in the Obrador D’estiu – one of the most renowned programs for contemporary drama in Europe.
Gabriel has extensive experience in theater, working in various forms of productions, from social theater in divised formula (”Europes”, coordinated by Armel Roussel at the National Theater in Brussels, Belgium or “Worker 2.0” directed by Ioana Păun at the Fabrica de Pensule in Cluj) to musicals such as West Side Story, directed by Răzvan Mazilu.
Gabriel is the founding editor of the online magazine Brrlog (active between 2016-2019), and was a regular contributor to VICE where he published investigative reports. As of 2019, he also started directing his own shows, by 2021 having three performances under his direction and a short movie, called ”Dislocat. Home Away”, an experiment about isolation, friendship and mental health created especially for watching in vertical phone format and premiered in the national magazine Libertatea. Both the shows and the film were well received positive feedback from the public, with critics praising Sandu’s strange and dynamic remix of performative tools.
Gabriel Sandu links in BIO 