Gulya Mirzoeva

Gulya Mirzoeva was born in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan. She studied literature and cinema in Moscow before working with various literary magazines and creating her first documentaries for Tajikfilm Studios and Russian television. In 1992, Gulya settled in France where she made documentary films in collaboration with France Télévisions and Arte, including Behind the Forest, in which she experimented with directing non-actors. Mirzoeva's works often explore Soviet history, as seen in her films Mikhail Gorbatchev, simples confidences (2012), which delves into the intimate life of the last leader of the USSR, and Afghanistan 1979 (2014), which traces the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Her film, The Scientist, the Imposter and Stalin: How to Feed the People (2018), tells the story of a merciless struggle between science and ideology in the Soviet Union.