Alisa Kovalenko is a Ukrainian award-winning documentary director from Kyiv. She was born in 1987 and grew up in Zaporizhzhia in south-eastern Ukraine, and studied documentary cinema at the Karpenko-Kary National University of Theatre, Cinema and Television in Kyiv and at the Andrzej Wajda School in Warsaw in the Dok Pro programme. Alisa’s debut feature-length documentary Alisa in Warland, a personal diary through revolution and war in Ukraine had its world premiere in the First Appearance competition at IDFA 2015 in Amsterdam. Home Games (2018), a social fairy-tale with a sensitive female gaze about the broken dreams of a young professional female football player, appeared at Sheffield Doc/Fest 2018 and was shown again at IDFA Amsterdam, featured in over 100 festivals and won many awards. In 2021, Home Games was the first Ukrainian creative documentary ever acquired by Netflix.
In 2018, Alisa directed and coordinated Beautiful Game, a 10-part documentary series commissioned by the Prague-based international broadcaster Current Time TV.
That year, she became a member of the European Film Academy (EFA). After the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, Alisa left the editing room of We Will Not Fade Away and joined a volunteer fighting unit of the Ukrainian Armed Forces (AFU), directly engaged on the front line in the Kyiv and the Kharkiv region. She fought in the trenches for four months before returning to finish We Will Not Fade Away. The film had its world premiere at Berlinale Generation (2023).
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