Born in 1986 in Rostov-on-Don, Russia. At the age of 14, Taya moved to Moscow where she graduated from high school. At 16, Taya got enrolled into the Directing for TV and Film program at the Institute of Cinematography and Television (formerly known as the Institute of Television and Radio Broadcasting named after Litovchin).

In her sophomore year, Taya started a video production company, where she served as a director, screenwriter, and producer.

In the following decade, Taya completed over 100 commercial projects, mostly working for international companies. With her excellent work ethic and high quality video production, Taya built a solid career in directing promotional and advertising videos.

Taya directed video projects for the famous French manufacturer Renault, where she was employed for 10 years. Taya also worked with another automobile manufacturer KIA, as well as the Swedish Cellulose Company for 5 years. For over 2 years, Taya collaborated with world-known brands like popular French retailer Castorama and multinational food-product corporation Danone.

During the early years of Taya's video production company, she often wore many hats working solo on her projects as the scriptwriter, producer, videographer, director, and editor. As her company grew, she got to work with the film crews of 30-40 people, primarily as a director and producer. Taya's proven record of producing high quality work helped her build trusting relationships with many employers. During the last two years of her career in shooting commercial videos, Taya's proven record of producing high quality work led to her employers giving her full freedom over creative choices. It became a standard practice when, during the development stages of the project, Taya would only have a brief meeting with the stakeholders regarding the company's values and goals and would go on to deliver outstanding commercial work. The trusted relationships she built helped her later when she was working on her directorial debut, a short film 'My Dear Fish' that became a turning point in her career.

Taya produced her works all over Russia, Europe (France, UK, Lithuania, Spain, Italy, Slovakia), and Asia (South Korea, China, Mongolia). Taya's production company was the first private company in Russia to purchase the Red Epic camera to use in commercial shoots.

Taya is skilled in advanced techniques of video production, including but not limited to underwater shots, aerial shots (from a helicopter), and crane shots.

Taya attended the first in Russia screenwriting workshop by Robert McKee. She also completed the 6-months directing program by the prominent Soviet and Russian director Alexander Mitta ('Moscow, My Love', 'Lost in Siberia'). Taya's pitch for the short film My Dear Fish was selected for development in the Kultburo film lab (Moscow, Russia) under the supervision of lab's program director Anna Gudkova (Russian producer, head script reader for the film production company Art Pictures Group, creative producer of TV-3 channel, business event planner for the Russian film festival Kinotavr).

In 2014, during her participation in the lab, Taya shot and produced her short film, My Dear Fish, with the Russian and European crews. The film was shot on location in Crimea (Ukraine) and Moscow (Russia). The total budget was 6 million rubles (~150,000EU at the time). Taya was able to raise the funds through crowdfunding campaigns, donations from her former employers, and to crowdsource her production needs.

The crowdfunding campaign that Taya created became the most successful in Russia in the Short Film category with over 42,000EU raised. Taya's short film caused an unprecedented stir in the Russian media with over 10 TV channels and over 30 news outlets running stories about My Dear Fish.

Much of the post-production work on the film was crowdsourced. Cinelab SoundMix, the Russian sound production company, offered a sound mixing studio to use over the course of 2 months free of charge (~10,000EU worth of their regular pricing). Pixel Bears studio, a VFX company, with their CEO Dmitry Shirokov, created the graphics for the film without charge (worth 20,000EU of their regular pricing).

The first screening for My Dear Fish, a 23 minute film, was attended by over 1500 people and was a success.

The film has since become a subject for several student papers and academic works. During the promotion of the film, as well as after the completion of the crowdfunding campaign, Taya was invited to talk about filmmaking as a lecturer and conduct workshops at various colleges, universities, technology and media forums - in Russia, Ukraine, and France.

Taya became a mentor for over 10 crowdfunding projects. Taya also offered consulting and helped bring to life multiple projects that covered social and cultural issues of the modern world.

Following the release of her film in 2015, Taya wrote and published a book "My Dear Fish Movie. True Story. Follow Your Dream" where she told the story of how her short film was made. A web-documentary series was produced, for which almost 20,000 euros were raised through crowdfunding.

Taya founded her online school, The School of Conscious Filmmaking and Editing. Over the course of 7 years, she created and launched 12 educational programs for beginners and advanced filmmakers, with over 500 video lessons. During this period, more than 2,000 people, absolute beginners to professional videographers, took Taya's classes and learned how to create high quality videos.


Taya's flagship course was a Film about Family, a course with an emphasis on creating a memorable video about family history, a genealogical tree, family roots, and family members. It grew out of Taya's own family's annual tradition of creating a video about her family's life, which she carried on for 11 years.


Taya's other courses included teaching how to shoot promotional and advertising videos, documentary videos using archival materials.

Before the war, I worked on the feature film ' The Flow' , which tells about the relationship between political and domestic violence. My film 'The Flow' tells how violence has been growing within society, about how back in 2012-2014 the first detentions of those who disagreed with this government began, and most importantly, how this violence is interconnected with violence in the family.