Milo Rau (born 1977) is a Swiss theatre director, journalist, playwright, essayist, and lecturer. In 2007 he founded a theatre and film production company, the International Institute of Political Murder (IIPM), and from 2018 until 2023 was the artistic director of the Belgian theatre group NTGent, in Ghent, transforming its direction. He is known for his political theatre.

Milo Rau was born in 1977 in Bern, Switzerland. His father's Jewish family moved from Germany to Switzerland to escape the Nazis shortly before World War Two, while his mother, surnamed Larese, had Italian origins. His parents divorced when he was about two years old. Until he was 18, his name was Milo Larese, but then he decided his name was too romantic, so he took the father's family name Rau.

He studied sociology, German studies, and Romance studies in Paris, Zürich, and Berlin, working under the instruction of Tzvetan Todorov and Pierre Bourdieu, among others.

In 1997, he travelled as a journalist to the state of Chiapas in Mexico, and to Cuba. In 2000 he began writing for the Swiss daily newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung.

Since 2002, he has been active as a playwright, author, and director in Switzerland and abroad, working with the Maxim Gorki Theater and Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin, Staatsschauspiel Dresden, the Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers in Paris, and many other theatres.

In 2007, he founded a theatre and film production company, the International Institute of Political Murder (IIPM). The company was originally founded to coordinate Rau's project The Last Days of the Ceausescus, but over time, its focus broadened to "the multimedia treatment of historical and sociopolitical conflicts." Since its founding, the IIPM has realised more than 50 theatrical productions, films, books, exhibitions, and political actions. Headquartered in Berlin, IIPM also has offices in Ghent, as well as St Gallen in Switzerland.

The Last Hours of Elena and Nicolae Ceaușescu (2009/10), later called The Last Days of the Ceausescus (Die letzten Tage der Ceausescus) was a re-enactment of the trial that convicted Romanian Communist leaders Elena and Nicolae Ceaușescu and condemned them to execution on Christmas Day in 1989. IIPM was able to obtain testimonies from individuals directly involved in the Romanian revolution (including dissidents, politicians, revolutionaries and ordinary Romanians) and the trial of the Ceaușescus, (including the general who betrayed them, the officer who captured them, and one of the soldiers who shot them). Rau wrote the script (which was published as a book) and directed the performance, which, after being cut short after two performances in the Odeon Theatre in Bucharest, premiered at Hebbel am Ufer (HAU) in Berlin before touring Switzerland at the Schlachthaus Theater in Bern, Theaterhaus Gessnerallee in Zurich, and Südpol in Lucerne. It was also produced at the Festival d'Avignon in France. A documentary film (Die letzten Tage der Ceausescus), co-directed by Marcel Bächtiger and Rau, includes the stage production and footage from backstage at the Odeon, as well as eyewitness interviews and archival material, and deconstructs the play.

Hate Radio (2011/12) documents a Rwandan radio station and its role in the Rwandan genocide. It was invited to show at the Berliner Theatertreffen, and was produced at HAU2 in May 2012.