Russia

Yuriy Pivovarov was born in Moscow in 1990. He majored in philosophy at the Russian State University. He has worked as a first camera assistant in movie productions since 2013, and has attended the Marina Razbezhkina and Mikhail Ugarov School of Documentary Film and Theater since 2018.

István Gábor Takács studied to be a psychologist and has worked as a human rights activist, video filmmaker, trainer and contributor at the Law Reporter Foundation. He led the video program of the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union between 2007 and 2015, and worked for five years in the needle exchange program of the Drug Prevention Foundation. He is the author of several articles on harm reduction, and the cinematographer, film editor and co-director of over 700 online videos.

Born in Uzbekistan, Askold Kurov has lived in Russia since 1991. He earned a degree in documentary filmmaking at Marina Razbezhkina and Mikhail Ugarov’s School of Documentary Film and Theater in Moscow. His films Winter, Go Away!, Leninland and Children 404 won critical acclaim and were screened at numerous festivals. His work focuses on human rights and social conflict in contemporary Russia.

Dmitri Vologdin was born in Russia in 1988. He graduated from the St. Petersburg State University of Film and Television with a degree in Film and TV Directing, and studied at the Cinema School of Krzysztof Zanussi in Warsaw.

Georgy Molodtsov is an award-winning director and producer who specializes in production of 360/VR content, as well as organizing cinematic VR events as part of film festivals that showcase 360 content. He is the co-founder of the VRability social project and Russian VR Seasons initiative. He is also the curator of the goEast film festival’s Open Frame Award and VR Scientific Festival in Sweden.

David Abelevich Kaufman (Denis Kaufman; pseudonym Dziga Vertov) was a director, screenwriter, and theoretician of documentary film, one of the creators of its language. He came to Soviet documentary film in 1918, inspired by the ideas of the revolution, and became known as a vivid innovator and experimenter. Vertov’s films One Sixth of the World (1926), Enthusiasm: Symphony of the Donbass (1930), Three Songs about Lenin (1934), and especially Man with a Movie Camera (1929) remain models for generations of documentary filmmakers. His filming practices and theories influenced the cinéma vérité style of documentary moviemaking and the Dziga Vertov Group, a radical filmmaking cooperative which was active in the 1960s.

Ksenia Elyan has been a professional editor of documentaries, TV programs, commercials and other video productions for nearly two decades. She has experience as a film director and DoP. In 2010, she graduated as a documentary director from Marina Razbezhkina and Mikhail Ugarov’s School of Documentary Film and Theater, in Moscow.

Georgy Molodtsov is an award-winning director and producer who specializes in production of 360/VR content, as well as organizing cinematic VR events as part of film festivals that showcase 360 content. He is the co-founder of the VRability social project and Russian VR Seasons initiative. He is also the curator of the goEast film festival’s Open Frame Award and VR Scientific Festival in Sweden.

Renato Borrayo Serrano was born in 1992, in Guatemala, but has lived in Russia since 2012. He graduated from the VGIK in 2017 as a film director specialized in documentary films, and attended Marina Razbezhkina and Mikhail Ugarov School of Documentary Film and Theatre. His Film for Carlos was awarded Honorary Mention by the International Jury at the 2017 DOK Leipzig.