Lithuanian-American Filmmaker Marius Markevicius On Newest Doc „Thug Rose”

As a first-generation Lithuanian-American, Marius Markevicius, filmmaker and President of Sorrento Productions, is naturally drawn to stories from the Eastern European diaspora. This is true of his directorial debut documentary that premiered at Sundance, The Other Dream Team, a film about the intersection of basketball and Lithuanian independence that follows the 1992 Lithuanian national basketball team on their journey to the Olympics shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union. Marius’s awareness for Lithuanian culture organically led him into the ring for his next subject, Lithuanian MMA fighter and mental health advocate Rose Namajunas.

In his newest documentary Thug Rose: Mixed Martial Artist, Marius and his crew closely follow the two-time world champ on her path to success, getting a glimpse at the formidable and vulnerable woman known in the MMA world as Thug Rose.

In this exclusive interview, we spoke with Marius about his start to directing and producing, his approach to connecting with his doc subjects, and how he captured the spirit, strength, and vulnerability of two-time world champion Thug Rose.

Tell us a bit about yourself. What was your first job as a director and how did you decide to pursue your craft professionally?
I went to film school at UCLA for my master’s degree, but before that I went to Berkeley as a Business major undergrad and started working in real estate business, my family business. I enjoyed that, but the calling was storytelling and writing and directing, so I decided to shift back in that direction and go to film school. Out of film school I did a few indie projects, which were narrative. We had a couple films at Sundance which I produced—I was a producer first. My first directing feature was The Other Dream Team, which premiered at Sundance in 2012. Since then I’ve been going back and forth between directing and producing, and switching between narrative and docs. 

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