When an independent far-right outlier rose from political oblivion – almost like a real-world glitch – to snag the lead spot in round one of Romania’s 2024 presidential elections, Europe’s attention turned quickly to the one platform which he had intuited like none other: TikTok. Exploding a political crisis which saw the elections annulled and a new far-right ascendant soon emerge, the incident served as cyber-portent of what’s to come in democracy’s near-future: digital dictatorships, and leaders able to build rabid political blocs from nothing more than cellphones, hatred, and dark-hued charisma.
Anastaseu Ştefan becomes the first openly trans film director in Eastern Europe to win a film award. Photo: Gopo Awards.
Yet, for Anastaseu Ştefan – the first openly-trans award winner at Romania’s Gopo Film Awards – our phones are swords as much as they are cages, potential means of resistance against these incipient means of oppression that they themselves solidify. A lifelong political activist, TikTok essentially took starring role in his prize-tipped short film TikTok Cowboy, both its namesake and its medium (various sections of the film, including its opening, were shot on iPhone camera).
Starring role not as a villain, that is, but as an anti-hero; as the one tool that Zoro – a young, impoverished Roma father – has to fight a state structure that insists on his sequestering, silencing, and erasure.
Speaking with GAY45, Anastaseu discussed how technology is both saviour and downfall for many marginalised groups; why he chose to centre Roma experiences in his debut short; and the importance of intersectionality – not just as a hashtag, but as actionable and coordinated praxis.
Jude Jones (JJ): Your short film TikTok Cowboy is a new kind of take on the Western genre, films that idealised a certain form of masculinity, statelessness, and moral greyness. All of these being themes that also relate to Zoro, your film’s main character. What made you choose Westerns and cowboys as references?
Anastaseu Ştefan (AS): I tried to create an anti-fairytale structure in a way, where the hero is no longer a prince on a white horse but a young Roma man on an ordinary one. But, the cowboy fantasy stems from the idea of performative masculinity. Perhaps, in some way, it also ties into my identity as a transgender person. Zoro is part of my personal exploration, a journey to uncover the mysteries of masculinity.
Growing up, my father taught me that it was very masculine to watch cowboy movies, where the hero is often a solitary figure, weighed down by profound pain. Through a journey, he discovers, or proves, his manhood.
With Zoro, I also wanted to deconstruct the classic image of the traditional, hardened masculine hero. Zoro embodies a form of soft masculinity, but not in the sense that he’s passive or unable to act when necessary. Rather, his strength doesn’t derive from asserting dominance or performing manhood in a conventional way. He’s just a young guy who unexpectedly becomes a father and loves his son deeply – and more importantly, who isn’t afraid to express that love openly. That, to me, is a powerful form of masculinity: one rooted in care, vulnerability, and presence, not control or repression.
In TikTok Cowboy, things go well only until the midpoint of the film, where a quote on a title card marks a false ending. In truth, it’s the end of the fantasy. From there, both the heroism and the main character’s sense of control unravel, exposing vulnerability and the failure of his journey. This core message is encapsulated perfectly in the quote on that card: “A man isn’t born a cowboy, he becomes one.” For me, this means, especially with the trans subtext, that no one is born as anything, they become.
No one is born a parent, a father, or a man. You become one. Much like Simone de Beauvoir’s famous line: “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” We are a collection of roles and stories we tell ourselves about who we are. But, in essence, we only truly become who we are when the roles we assign to ourselves begin to fail. This journey, where the facade collapses, is the one that matters.
JJ: Watching the film, it was particularly that theme of statelessness and non-belonging that I found at the heart of the film, and as something particularly relevant to Roma people and their oppression. Whereas American Westerns romanticised the idea of not having a fixed home, TikTok Cowboy demonstrates the social and bureaucratic realities of being somebody who might exist outside the state’s formal structures. I’m thinking particularly of that scene where Zoro tells the police officers he doesn’t have a state ID, or when he can’t see his wife in hospital because he doesn’t have the right papers. Why was it important, for you, to portray these realities of the Roma experience?
AS: I’ve always felt a tension between my desire to tell this story and the privilege I carry in doing so. I’m white, and even though I’m part of a minority myself as a trans person, that doesn’t automatically give me the right to speak for other marginalised communities. That’s why I tried not to dramatise or sensationalise anything in TikTok Cowboy.
I also worked closely with Roma collaborators – especially Bondi [who played Zoro] and my former colleague Linda Zsiga – and with families from the community to make sure the story didn’t just reflect my imagination but also resonated with their lived experiences.
When I began working with Bondi, he shared many of his personal experiences with me, and I tried to integrate them into the film as much as possible while also giving him the freedom to self-represent and shape the character to reflect his own story. For example, when Bondi’s first child was born, both he and his partner were minors, and they encountered numerous issues with child protection services. That layer of realism is present in the film. He told me how his partner was left alone in a hospital ward while bleeding, and nobody paid attention. The hospital scene was also inspired by a real case of a Romani woman who was forced to give birth on the pavement outside a hospital after being denied care.
For two and a half years, I also worked in the Pata Rât ghetto in Cluj-Napoca with Roma communities who had been forcibly evicted and relocated there in 2010. They still live there to this day. That was my first direct encounter with what institutionalised racism truly means. These people were deceived, told they would be relocated to proper housing, only to find themselves, in the middle of winter, on top of a hill next to the garbage dump, facing bare modular housing units with no heating, no documents, no support, no dignity.
Despite the efforts of many activists – including my former colleague Linda, who has worked with the community for over a decade and once lived there herself – the systemic barriers remain. Linda eventually managed to obtain social housing, but the process is near impossible when you don’t have an ID card or a street to call home.
In the eyes of the state, what truly defines your citizenship is a piece of paper, an ID card. The identity document becomes the instrument that certifies your belonging to society. When an individual is systematically denied the right to legal identification, we are witnessing one of the most insidious and violent forms of oppression.
And this is not merely a bureaucratic inconvenience or a gap in housing legislation, it’s something far more complex and intentional. Without an ID, you cannot access basic services: hospitals, schools, social assistance, legal protections. It is a state-engineered form of marginalisation.
JJ: In his book An Apartment on Uranus, trans theorist Paul Preciado compared the experience of statelessness to that of transness. Those ID and hospital scenes again come to mind here for me, with Romania being somewhat notorious in the EU for the legal and bureaucratic obstacles it also puts on trans people self-identifying and obtaining gender-affirming legal status. Did you have these parallels at all in mind while making TikTok Cowboy?
AS: Yes, unfortunately, Romania has developed a certain notoriety for the bureaucratic and institutional barriers it places in front of marginalised communities. To this day, the state fails to offer any form of legal recognition to same-sex couples, despite repeated calls from European institutions to align with human rights standards. When it comes to trans individuals, the situation becomes even more labyrinthine, entangled in a web of legal ambiguity, medical gatekeeping, and inconsistent judicial rulings.
In Romania, the situation for trans people could be worse. But it certainly has a long way to go. On the brighter side, there is a small but vital network of trans-friendly medical professionals and specialists that the community relies on. Although the list is far from extensive, the people on it are doing remarkable work. They do their best to navigate the ambiguous legal framework and help us access medical care, even within the confines of a system that often resists our existence.
Returning to the film though, some of the parallels with my personal experience emerged intuitively. Just like Zoro doesn’t have an ID, I could also say that I don’t have one, at least not one that reflects my current reality. The person named in my documents doesn’t exist anymore. Much like Zoro, I too am a ghost citizen. We both exist in a state of bureaucratic invisibility, our identities unacknowledged by the systems meant to serve us.
JJ: Intersectionality is a massive part of your work and activism. At your Gopo Awards acceptance speech, you also mentioned ongoing struggles in Palestine, Ukraine, Serbia, and Hungary. What is the importance of intersectionality to you, and how do all these struggles interconnect?
AS: To me, intersectionality is not a label, a hashtag, or a branding strategy. It’s not a trendy buzzword for corporations to monetise. It’s not something you achieve by simply adding a minority character into your film. Intersectionality has a long and deeply rooted legacy in the struggles and resilience of Black women who originated the framework – a legacy carried forward by Roma activists and trans women who fought, often on the front lines, for liberation and visibility. To claim intersectionality merely because it sounds progressive or fashionable is a profound disservice to those who risked everything and to whom we owe many of the rights we enjoy today.
For me, intersectionality means action. It means occupying space, confronting systems of power, organising within and across communities, and refusing silence. I believe cinema can be an incredibly powerful tool for intersectional work, but not simply through token inclusion. Marginalised characters are not checkboxes to tick off on a diversity form. They are not ornamental. They are people, real people, who navigate structural injustice, racism, and discrimination.
A powerful example of intersectionality – often cited by Roma feminist activists I’ve had the chance to work with – is the case of Florica Moldovan, from 2019. Florica, a Romani woman facing multiple layers of marginalisation, including linguistic vulnerability as a Romani speaker, was violently assaulted by a bus driver in a public space. She had a valid ticket, yet was denied access to the bus. When she called emergency services, the 112 operator cursed and insulted her. A fundraiser was launched to help buy her a home. In a chilling twist, some local residents formed a group to pool money themselves – not to support her, but to prevent a Romani person from moving into their neighborhood. The case went to court, and despite being the victim of abuse, Florica was found guilty of “disturbing the public order” and fined 1,800 lei (350€).
This is precisely why intersectionality is essential – to understand how stereotypes, when institutionalised, become oppression. It’s not just about identity markers; it’s about how systems of racism, sexism, classism, and linguistic discrimination converge to strip someone of dignity and justice.
I hold close the chant, “None of us are free until all of us are free.” Feminism, if it is truly feminist, must extend beyond individual or national interests. It must include Palestine. It must include Ukraine. It must include Serbia, Hungary, Georgia. Roma people. Feminism cannot be selective.
In that spirit, I want to recognise and uplift the efforts of Romanian students who organized a student encampment for Palestine last summer. One of the universities was occupied, and the students faced confrontations with the police and gendarmes. It’s worth noting that law enforcement responded with significantly more aggression to these protests than they have in other recent demonstrations. I also want to mention the anti-fascist protests that took place last November during the first round of elections. I was there, and I want to reiterate the message we chanted then and now: The anti-fascist students will not be defeated.
Palestine has become a contentious word on public stages. Yet Palestine is, in one way or another, about all of us – it exposes how we have slipped into being passive spectators to a genocide, how the screen itself has become history’s lens. Cannes, the Gopos, the Oscars, red carpets: these feel insignificant next to what may be the most important “film” of our recent era – the hundreds of clips and livestreams recorded by Palestinians.
Palestine is about us; it shows how an oppressive system can wipe out an entire people if it chooses. As filmmakers, it is our responsibility not to let history go blind. Resistance means refusing to forget, refusing to stay silent, refusing to lie. To quote Noor Hindi: “Fuck your lectures on art – my people are dying!”
Free Palestine now and forever.
JJ: Another theme that obviously looms in the film is TikTok, and how social media has shifted traditional power structures. Zoro protects himself from police discrimination by filming the officers. Palestinians have also been able to document to the world Israel’s violence by sharing images and videos online, becoming citizen journalists. Yet we’re simultaneously in an age where there’s much anxiety surrounding how technologies and “techno-feudalism” might worsen oppression against minoritised communities. It’s a little Audre Lord, the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. What’s your take on the relationship between technology, oppression, and resistance?
AS: That’s the contradiction, right? The phone is both the cage and the sword. Zoro films the police to protect himself, the same way Palestinians document violence to resist erasure. But the platforms we use for resistance are also owned by tech giants who profit from our data and trauma. There’s a quote I love: “The revolution will not be televised, but it might be livestreamed.” Yet even livestreams can be shadowbanned or taken down. So yes, it’s complicated. Audre Lorde was right – the master’s tools rarely dismantle the master’s house. But sometimes, when the house is on fire, you use whatever you can grab. And right now, for many of us, that’s a smartphone.
Social media was supposed to democratise access to visibility and self-representation. Especially for ethnic, racial, and sexual minorities who have long been excluded or distorted in mainstream media. But what we’re seeing now, especially in Romania, is how quickly these platforms turn into weapons of erasure and propaganda. The same tools used for liberation are now being used to manipulate, discredit, and control. And not just in Romania, of course, there is this big conspiracy about the woke virus and a lot of hate against trans people, the trans agenda. I mean, the Orange man even wanted to ban the word gender.
In the last year, especially leading up to the Romanian elections, we’ve seen an explosion of far-right populist content on TikTok and Instagram. Figures like Călin Georgescu essentially rose from the ashes of TikTok, building a following not through traditional media or public debate, but through a coordinated strategy of bots, viral clips, and algorithmic manipulation. He didn’t need legacy media; he had the perfect echo chamber.
His campaign, like others on the far-right, used nationalism, conspiracy theories, and anti-European, anti-LGBTQ+, and anti-Roma rhetoric to mobilise users. This wasn’t just digital campaigning, it was propaganda in real time. Now, a lot of politicians have shifted their campaigns on social media because right now, views are even more powerful than votes. Its views that perpetuate a digital dictatorship.
To me, it increasingly feels like Meta is favouring the far-right. Not because of ideology necessarily, but because outrage sells. Anger drives engagement. Hate travels faster than nuance. Vulnerable communities – Roma people, trans people, refugees – become collateral damage in an attention economy that rewards extremism.
That’s why, with TikTok Cowboy, I wanted to both use and critique this space. The film is structured around these contradictions: the visibility that can save you and the violence that visibility can attract. Zoro lives between those cracks. Like so many of us. Caught between being erased and being exploited. Between the platform and the algorithm. Between survival and spectacle.
We must challenge the algorithms, restructure them, and refuse to let them swallow us whole. A weapon more powerful than the phone will always be our voice. Even if they shut down our accounts, we still have the streets, where we can keep fighting for the truth. And if they take the streets from us, our voices will still be strong enough to tear down the walls they try to build between us. We need to cooperate, we need a strategy rather than ideology. They try to build the borders, but we will build the bridges! And we won’t let them on, under no circumstances. No trespassing for fascism!
A long-format audio version of this interview will shortly be available through our channels wherever you got your podcasts – stay tuned!
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