Zoya Laktionova was born in Mariupol to a working-class family in 1984. She is a documentary filmmaker and visual artist. Zoya aims to convey emotions through art metaphors intertwined with the dramatic language of cinema. This often makes it difficult to clearly allocate Zoya’s films, which is why they are shown both at film festivals and in art museums such as the Center Pompidou in Paris or the MUMOK in Vienna. In her artistic practice, she adopts micro-history, auto-ethnography and creative storytelling to unfold the complexity of greater events and historical contexts.