Julia Loktev

Director

“For me cinema is image, sound, and the faces and bodies and, yes, voices, of my actors, and sometimes the words that they are saying, but not only the words.”

Biography

Julia Loktev was born in Russia in 1969 and moved to the US when she was nine. She studied film at New York University and wrote, directed and edited her first documentary, Moment of Impact (1998) on her own. Presented at Locarno, it also won several prizes including the Directing Award Documentary at Sundance, the Grand Prize at Cinéma du Réel in Paris and Best Documentary Film at Karlovy Vary. Day Night Day Night (2006) premiered in Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes, where it won the Prix Regards Jeunes. Julia Loktev also makes video art installations that have been exhibited in art museums worldwide, such as Tate Modern, and was awarded a 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship. The Loneliest Planet (2011) is her second fiction feature film. –Locarno Film Festival