Translucent Being: Sergey Dvortsevoy

Sergey Dvortsevoy (1962) is a Kazakh director and documentarian of Russian origin. He is ften grouped with the Russian New Wave, which was formed at the turn of the millennium as a result of efforts to reflect the state of Russian society and a range of socio-economic issues through the medium of film.

Dvortsevoy was born in Shymkent, Kazakhstan and prior to studying the art of filmmaking, he graduated from flight school in Ukraine and the Radio Engineering Institute in Novosibirsk. For a while he worked as an airline technician, then was admitted to the Higher Courses for Screenwriters and Directors in Moscow, which kicked off his career as the creator of documentary and fictional short films.

In 2008 he made his debut with the feature-length fiction film Tulpan, who garnered him numerous awards at international film festivals – Best Director at the Tokyo IFF, Discovery of the Year at the European Film Awards, and the East of the West Award at the Karlovy Vary IFF. Tulpan contains strong links to Dvortsevoy’s socially critical documentary films and blends together elements of visual lyricism with a naturalistic effort to capture the real life of Kazakh herdsmen.

The peak of critical naturalism in his work to date is the film Ayka (2018), which highlights the deplorable living conditions of migrants in Russian society, explicitly depicting the postpartum difficulties of women, which earned Samal Eslyamová the award for best actress at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival.