About

foto: Oleg Yakushenkov

foto: Oleg Yakushenkov

aliona@freedom.nl 

Aliona van der Horst (Moscow, 1970) is a documentary auteur whose oeuvre consists of a wide variety of films with an outspoken filmic style. From the moment she started her career in 1997, many of her poetic documentaries have been internationally awarded and highly appreciated. Her most known works are Turn your body to the sun (2021), Love is Potatoes (2017), Water Children (2011), Boris Ryzhy (2008), Voices of Bam (2006) and The Hermitage Dwellers (2006). The reason for the international appeal of her work is undoubtedly correlated with her very defined style of poetic filmmaking and the international topics she addresses. Van der Horst also frequently appears as a guest lecturer at film festivals and film schools, that welcome her creative and poetic take on documentary filmmaking.

Born as a child of a Russian mother and a Dutch father, her dual nationality has translated within her work. She grew up in The Netherlands with a Russian-oriented upbringing, not only due to her mother’s Russian nationality, but also because of her father who studied in Moscow. She has a MA in Russian literature at the University of Amsterdam and studiet at the Amsterdam Film Academy.

 She was awarded with the special Jury Prize/Tribeca Film Festival, Grand Prix/FIFA, Best Mid-length Documentary Award/ IDFA, Best Documentary Award/Edinburgh filmfestival, Best Feature Documentary/Doxa Vancouver, and the Dutch Academy Award. 

 In four of her films, she depicts Russia’s troubled history, often finding a way to consider politically inflicted collective tragedies that are still open wounds in society. Two of them are first person films, dealing with her parents or her Russian family (After the spring of 68, Love is Potatoes). The other two Boris Ryzhy and Turn your body to the sun are set against the background of Perestroika times and World War 2.

 But her documentaries are not bound to Russia’s borders, with Voices of Bam (2006) being set in Iran, Water Children (2011) in Japan and a few other films in TheNetherlands. Rather, they are bound by an auteurist style of filmmaking that features personal stories. Throughout her work, she marks her identity as a filmmaker, but also her own personal identity – while she remains concerned with depicting the other. She creates intimacy through visualisation of internal thoughts, making her films more experiences than straight-lined narratives. In many of her films she closely collaborates with DoP and editor Maasja Ooms. Over the past two decades, she has developed a personal essayistic mode of documentary filmmaking that pays a lot of attention to poetic cinematography, rhythm, associational montage, sound and music. Retrospectives of her work were held in Barcelona, Kiev and Belgrade. She is a member of the Documentary branch of AMPAS and the European Film academy.  She is one of the founders of the collectively owned Dutch film production company DOCMAKERS

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SHORT:

In her 25 years of filmmaking Aliona van der Horst has received multiple awards for her films. Because of her personal, poetic and cinematic vision, her films are profoundly compelling and touching. Her most recent film Turn your body to the sun (2021) deals with history and memory through the story of a daughter searching for her fathers’ past and is hailed for its artistic use of archival footage (www.turnyourbodytothesun.com). Love is Potatoes (2017), is a first-person doc that deals with post-memory in contemporary Russia. It won a number of awards, including the Dutch Oscar in 2018. Two other films, Water Children and After the Spring of ‘68 are first-person docs. Her films revolve around the question of how ordinary people's lives are shaped by big historical events. Retrospectives of her work were held in Barcelona, Kiev and Belgrade. She is a member of the Documentary branch of AMPAS and the European Film Academy. 

She is one of the founders of the collectively owned Dutch film production company DOCMAKERS

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 FILMOGRAPHY

2023 GERLACH (74’)

2021 TURN YOUR BODY TO THE SUN (93)

2017 LOVE IS POTATOES (90’)
2013 15 ATTEMPTS (50’)
2011 WATER CHILDREN (75’)
2008 BORIS RYZHY (59’)
2006 VOICES OF BAM (89’)
2004 THE HERMITAGE DWELLERS /A PASSION FOR THE HERMITAGE (73’)

2001 AFTER THE SPRING OF ’68, A STORY ABOUT LOVE (58’)
1997 THE LADY WITH THE WHITE HAT (47’) 



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