Marianna Yarovskaya
Guest Speaker
Professional Affiliation
Filmmaker
Expert Bio
Marianna Yarovskaya is an award-winning Russian-American who is the director and producer of the 2018 Academy Award short-listed based on the book Women of the Gulag: Stories of Five Remarkable Lives by (2013). Best Documentary Short shortlist nominee, 2018 Academy Awards. She also produced (2012).
In 1998 Yarovskaya directed Undesirables won a , and a . Her documentary film Holy Warriors, a study of soldiers who found religion, has played in 35 countries worldwide. In 2006 she was a head of research on which won an . She produced feature films (2012)) and : the Movement (2013). She was a head of research on the Academy Award-winning films (2007), and worked in the research department on (2001), and also on award-winning feature documentaries (2010), Samsara (2012), (2013), (2014), (2014), Merchants of Doubt (2014), Red Army (2014), Swift Current (2016), (2016), Boston (2017). She is a recipient of the (NEH) Bridging Cultures Through Film grant, among many others.
Yarovskaya produced and directed Women of the Gulag with historian . Women of the Gulag was Short Listed for Academy Award Documentary Nomination in 2019. Yarovskaya is the first female director from Russia short-listed for the Oscars.
Yarovskaya received an MFA degree from the and an MA degree from .
