Mariia Ponomarova was born and raised in Kyiv, Ukraine. She is a film director, scriptwriter, producer and artistic researcher based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She has worked in both documentary and fiction as a director and 1st AD. Mariia participated in the documentarists movement "Babylon'13 - cinema of civil protest" during the revolution in Ukraine. She studied film directing and screenwriting at Karpenko-Karyi Kyiv National University of Theatre, Cinema and Television and graduated with an MA degree in Film Artistic Research program of the Netherlands Film Academy. Her short films were screened during international and national film festivals Go Short ISFF, Sarajevo Film Festival, Vancouver IFF, Molodist IFF, ArtDocFest, Netherlands Film Festival, CineDOC-Tbilisi, VIS Vienna Shorts, Regensburg Short Film Week and many more.