Zoya Laktionova was born in Mariupol (Ukraine), in a working-class family in 1984. She is a filmmaker and visual artist who uses moving images, photography, and texts in her works. Zoya aims to convey emotions through art metaphors intertwined with the dramatic language of cinema. In her artistic practice, she adopts micro-history, auto-ethnography, and creative storytelling to unfold the complexity of greater events and historical contexts. This often makes it difficult to clearly allocate Zoya's films, which is why they are shown both at film festivals (DOK Leipzig, FID Marseille, Cottbus, etc.) and in art museums such as the Centre Pompidou, Palais de Tokyo in Paris, or the MUMOK in Vienna. Zoya is a recipient of the Harriman Institute Residency at Columbia University '22-23, Civitella Visual Arts Fellow `23-24, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna Resident `23-24, Film Independent Global Media Makers Fellow `24, Cite Internationale des Arts resident `24-25.