Individual consultations and invited experts

The course includes: 

‣ Practical сlasses (5 times per month / 40 sessions / 120 hours)

‣ Workshops (3 times per month / 24 sessions / 48 hours)

‣ Mentor Consultations (from 3 sessions / from 3 hours)

‣ Psychological Support Group (once a month / 9 sessions / 18 hours)

‣ Pitching, rough cuts screenings, and final screenings

Throughout the course, each student makes their own film and completes additional practical assignments. The program may be adjusted depending on participants’ experience level if instructors consider it necessary. This overview highlights the core stages of the training.

Once a month, students may also choose to join the psychological support group to discuss challenges arising during intensive filmmaking work with a psychologist.

The program also includes individual consultations with mentors and workshops led by invited experts on specific topics (cinematography, producing, editing, sound work, and more).


FIRST SEGMENT — JANUARY–MARCH 2026

1. Documentary Film Forms: What is documentary? Direct Cinema. Observational Cinema. Personal Films. Cinema Verité. Archival Films. Experimental Films. Essay Films. Hybrid Forms.

2. How to choose a film idea. What determines whether an idea succeeds or fails. Writing a logline and synopsis.

3. How pitching works and what makes a successful pitch deck. Pitch teasers. Time management for public speaking. Project pitch to a guest jury.

4. Directing technique: identifying your weaknesses during production and turning them into strengths.

5. Creative exercises and assignments.

6. Shooting plan.  


SECOND SEGMENT — MARCH–JUNE 2026

7. The protagonist in documentary film. What is conflict? How to choose a protagonist.

8. Ethics in documentary film: Can a villain be a protagonist? Film or help? Filmmaker vs. Protagonist: Whose Story? How to tell stories without violating reality.

9. Screenwriting in documentary film. Storyline and plot. Dramaturgy: structure and arc. Storytelling specifics. Developing the logline and synopsis.

10. Interviews in documentary film.

11. Film as part of visual art. Light and composition. Camera placement. Framing, angles, and axis. Rules and variations.

12. The shot as a unit of artistic meaning. Structure within the frame. Distance.

13. Shooting plan updates and footage reviews.


THIRD SEGMENT — JUNE–JULY 2026

14. Organizing footage and sound. Labelling materials and setting up the edit. Building a film on a board: index cards, scene-based materials.

15. A short theory of editing. Editing phrases. Deciding on the beginning and ending of the film.

16. Project development opportunities, teamwork, and building healthy creative relationships.

17. Basics of producing.


FOURTH SEGMENT — AUGUST–SEPTEMBER 2026

18. Individual mentor consultations. Editing.

19. Preparing for public screenings.

20. Screenings and feedback.

Registration is closed

Un/Filmed Online: Documentary Film Workshop

The Un/Filmed School is opening enrollment for the third 12-week  online course in non-fiction playwriting, Un/Told, led by Anastasia Patlai and Elizaveta Spivakovskaya.

The course includes: 

‣ Group online sessions (12 classes / 4 hours each with breaks ) 

‣ Weekly homework assignments 

‣ Lectures on the history of documentary theatre (3 lectures / 1.5 hours + Q&A) 

‣ Feedback from instructors 

‣ Online staged readings of completed plays featuring professional actors and an expert panel at the final workshop showcase

During the course, participants will develop the tools and techniques of non-fiction playwriting. Over 12 weeks, each participant will createtheir own original play.

We will not only support participants  throughout the writing process, but also help them to  promote their work after the course ends. Graduates become part of the school's community and gain access to professional contacts in the documentary theatre world.

In two years since Un/Told launched, two cohorts of 12 participants each have completed the course . A total of 18 plays have been written, many of which have been published, shortlisted for prestigious competitions such as Lyubimovka and Dramatyzacyja!, and translated into Polish, Spanish, French, and other languages. Several plays have already had full theatrical premieres and public readings.

The course is open to Russian-speaking participants aged 18+. We welcome applications from around the world.


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.

Evgeniia Borisova

A mathematician with primary education and a film director with a secondary degree. She has produced several short films, one of which got special jury mention at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York. In 2022, she completed the main course at Un/Filmed and started working with the school's team.

Anastasia Vereshchagina

Anastasia is a film producer with extensive experience as a script supervisor, assistant director, and producer on numerous international film and TV projects, including those distributed by Netflix, Amazon, and Walter Presents, and nominated for a Daytime Emmy. After completing the 'Cultural Management' program at the University of Vienna in 2023, she began working with cultural initiatives and joined the school’s team in 2024.

Askold Kurov

Askold Kurov is a Russian documentary filmmaker. He graduated from 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”, and "Of Caravan and the Dogs" 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.
In 2024 he received a Golden Horn Award at the Krakow Film Festival for 
"Of Caravan and the Dogs". Kurov is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Renato Borrayo Serrano

Guatemalan and Russian film director. 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. Most recently, he worked as a director of photography on "Skywalkers: A Love Story" which premiered at Sundance in 2024 and was acquired by Netflix. 

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.

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. In 2024 she staged the play Memoria in Germany, which was shown at the Brecht Festival in Augsburg and at the Münchner Kammerspiele Theater in Munich. Since 2024, she has also been one of the artistic directors of the Lubimovka Festival of Contemporary Dramaturgy.

Elizaveta Spivakovskaya 

Elizaveta Spivakovskaya is a researcher and curator of interdisciplinary projects focused on documentary theatre practices and memory studies.
In 2013–2014, she co-authored the Taganka Jubilee Group project dedicated to the history of the Taganka Theatre, experimenting with different formats and ways of working with documents on and off stage.
As a researcher and curator, she participated in the preparation of the archive-based exhibitions A Man the Size of a House, dedicated to the memory of Dmitry Brusnikin (2019), and Sovremennik. The Beginning (2021) at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art.
She also served as a co-curator of theatre festival programmes, including the Russian Case programme of the Golden Mask Festival (2015, 2020) and the performance programme Theatrum: Re-Formation at the Institute of Theatre (2020).
In 2020 and 2021, she curated the Blackbox residency programme at the Vsevolod Meyerhold Centre in Moscow.
From 2016 to 2019, she was a co-curator of the Fringe programme of the Lyubimovka Young Playwriting Festival; in 2023, she co-curated the Echo of Lyubimovka festival in Granada together with Anastasia Patlai.
She teaches the history and theory of documentary art and works as a tutor and mentor in creative laboratories for teenagers and emerging artists.

Elena Kovalskaya

Elena Kovalskaya is a theater critic and an expert in contemporary theatre in general, and documentary theatre in particular. Over many years, Elena served as an expert and jury member for the Golden Mask award, was the artistic director of the Lyubimovka Festival, led the theater section of Afisha magazine, and worked first as director of the Meyerhold Center.
As a lecturer at GITIS, she taught theater history and headed the master’s program in Social Theater.
Regarding her experience in documentary theatre: since 2006, Elena has curated the documentary theatre branch of Kultproekt, which has produced nearly two dozen performances in theaters across Russia. In 2025, she edited the book "Staging the Gaze. Mikhail Ugarov on Theatre Where People Don’t Act" published by Individuum.

Courses

Un/Filmed Team