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Un/Filmed Online: Documentary Film Workshop

The Un/Filmed School launches a 10-week practical online course in documentary dramaturgy titled Un/Told, under the guidance of director Anastasia Patlay and playwright Ekaterina Bondarenko. Additionally, theater historian Elizaveta Spivakovskaya will deliver two lectures on the history of documentary theater and its current state.

Documentary theater engages in the study of the past and present events, providing the opportunity to present researched narratives on stage. The Un/Told project views documentary theater as a form of social investigation.

We will select 10 participants. They will learn documentary dramaturgy tools, and by the end of the course, each participant will create their own play.

Un/Told: Online Documentary Theater Workshop

Un/Filmed School offers an online course in documentary filmmaking for Russian speaking professionals from different countries. The project is initiated by a group of documentary filmmakers and producers from the United States, the European Union, former USSR countries and Latin America.

An international online documentary film school for Russian speaking students

We advocate for the freedom to choose topics and the freedom to be you

Victor Ilyukhin

Victor Ilyukhin is a non-fiction Producer/Director who has worked internationally in documentary film and television for more than 10 years. He produced and co-edited the documentary “Busy Inside”, which premiered at The Moscow International Film Festival, won the audience award at the Middlebury Film Festival, was screened at DOC NYC, Hamptons Doc Fest, and broadcasted nationally on PBS in 2021 and 2023. His other film “Two and Twenty Troubles” has been screened at many festivals worldwide. Victor is also a co-author of FRAME documentary film series produced by Positive Exposure in New York State. His work has been featured in The New York Times. Victor believes in the healing power of documentary filmmaking.

Askold Kurov

Born in Uzbekistan in 1974, Askold Kurov lived in Russia since 1991. After studying philology, theater, and theology, he earned a degree in documentary filmmaking at the Marina Razbezhkina and Mikhail Ugarov School of Documentary Film and Theater in Moscow. In 2012, he was one of the directors of the award-winning documentary “Winter, Go Away!”. His subsequent films, “Leninland” and “Children 404”, “Novaya” and “The Trial. The State of Russia vs Oleg Sentsov” also garnered critical acclaim and were screened at numerous festivals. As a co-producer of the HBO MAX documentary “Welcome to Chechnya”, he won a BAFTA award and received an EMMY nomination.

Ksenia Gapchenko

Ksenia Gapchenko is an award-winning, forward-thinking producer, striving to create engaging, powerful content with a lasting impact. In 2022 she produced the documentary “How to Save a Dead Friend” (co-production by Sweden, Norway, France, Germany, directed by M. Syroechkovskaya). The film was selected for the International Cannes Film Festival in 2022. It was also rewarded with a Special Mention at Visions du Reel and nominated for the EFA. Ksenia was a fellow of the Nipkow workshop 2022/2023, Ksenia’s professional training includes highly competitive international programs such as Eurodoc, Ex Oriente, B2B doc, and others. She pitched her projects at IDFA Forum, European Documentary Platform, Baltic Sea Docs, and was a recipient of the IDFA Bertha fund.

Igor Myakotin

Igor Myakotin is an Emmy-nominated, BAFTA-winning filmmaker who produced “Queendom” (SXSW 2023, NEXT:WAVE Jury Award at CPH:DOX) and “Welcome to Chechnya” (Sundance, Berlinale 2020). He was a 2022 Sundance Producing Fellow and was named one of the “40 Under 40” professionals working in the documentary industry by DOC NYC. Previously, Igor directed two award-winning shorts and was awarded a Davis Peace and Diplomacy grant at the International House in New York. Igor is a member of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences and an alumnus of NextDoc.

Renato Borrayo Serrano

Guatemalan and Russian film director, director of photography, and editor. He graduated from VGIK and the Marina Razbezhkina and Mikhail Ugarov School of Documentary Film and Theater in Moscow as a film director specializing in documentary. Renato participated in various prestigious film industry events such as Dok Leipzig Co-production Market, Karlovy Vary IFF Works in Progress, NORTH PITCH — Below Zero, and many others. His “Film for Carlos” received the Honorary Prize of the Jury at Dok Leipzig 2017 and an Honorary Mention of the Jury at Artdocfest in 2017 in Moscow. It also won the Prize for Best Short Film at DocuDays UA 2018 in Kyiv, among many others. His feature-length directorial debut, “Life of Ivanna”, premiered in the main competition at CPH:DOX in 2021 and was screened at Hot Docs 2021. Later, it was screened at the Zurich Film Festival, DOC NYC, and Docaviv. His films were financed in part by the Norwegian Film Institute and the Estonian Film Institute.

Darya Sidorova

Daria Sidorova is a director, cinematographer, and editor. She graduated from the Stroganov Art Academy, and later from the Marina Razbezhkina and Mikhail Ugarov School of Documentary Film and Theater. She directed documentary films “Why Am I Here” and “I Want to Sing”, and worked on over twenty films for the Russian TV channel “Kultura.” Daria’s films gained recognition at numerous international film festivals. Together with Renato Borrayo Serrano, she worked on the documentary “Life of Ivanna” as a co-director and cinematographer. The film made its debut in the main competition of CPH:DOX in 2021, and was screened at Hot Docs, Zurich Film Festival, DOC NYC, and Docaviv.

Pavel Loparev

Pavel Loparev is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, producer, and stop-motion animator. He has collaborated with major studios in Moscow, New York, Barcelona, and Santiago. He has directed various animated and documentary projects aimed at supporting stigmatized groups in society and raising awareness about various challenges they face every day. His projects were screened and won prizes at numerous prestigious international festivals, including DokLeipzig IFF, Hamburg FF, Jihlava IDFF, One World FF, HotDocs, IDFA, CPH:DOX, Open City Doc, Annecy, IAFF, and others. In 2015, Pavel co-founded “Illuminator”, an educational online media project for Russian parents of LGBTQ teens. Later Pavel produced an animated documentary series about the lives of LGBTQ people in Russia.

Anastasia Patlay

Anastasia Patlay is a director, playwright, and festival curator, who specializes in documentary theater. Her productions were featured at Teatr.Doc, Meyerhold Center, Novosibirsk Globe Theater, Sakharov Center, and Museum of Architecture. She served as a curator of a theater program "Archaeology of Memory" at the Sakharov Center and was one of the curators of the festival "Hunting for Reality" at Teatr.Doc. Anastasia gives master classes and workshops on documentary theater. Since February 2022 she has been living in Granada, and participated in The Lubimovka Echo Festivals in Paris, Belgrade and Berlin (2022-2023). Together with Nana Grinstein she researched and wrote the play Discrediting (2023); which was a part of the international project "Sąsiedzi. Sąsiedzi. Sąsiedzi. Neighbors", initiated by the Polish foundation Floating EKA. In June 2023 she organized the festival “The Lubimovka Echo. Granada”.
Since February 2023, Anastasia was a resident of the Brecht House Museum in Augsburg. On February 27, 2024, the premiere of the play “Memoria” took place at the Brecht Festival in Augsburg. The play was performed in two languages - German and Russian.

Ekaterina Bondarenko

Ekaterina Bondarenko is a playwright, dance-dramaturge, and performer. Her documentary texts and plays have been staged in Russian independent and repertory theaters. Since 2011, she has worked at Teatr.doc (Moscow) as an author and curator of documentary projects. From 2014 to 2017, she served as the chief playwright of the New Stage at the Alexandrinsky Theatre (St. Petersburg), organizing festivals such as ‘New Play for Children’ and a festival for readings of contemporary European dramaturgy. From 2016 to 2020, in collaboration with choreographer Tatiana Gordeeva, she created a series of performances for the Meyerhold Center (Moscow). She also curated the Blackbox laboratory there in 2019. Additionally, she taught the practice of documentary theater at the St. Petersburg Theater Academy under Natalia Skorokhod’s master’s course in 2015 and at the Moscow School of New Cinema (MSNC) under Dmitry Kubasov’s course from 2020 to 2021.

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Courses

Un/Filmed instructors