Biography
Darya Zhuk is a film director and playwright of Belarusian origin. She was born in Minsk in 1980 and moved to the United States at the age of 16. She studied economics at Harvard University before earning an MFA in directing from Columbia University in 2014.
Her feature debut Crystal Swan (2018), which she directed and co-wrote, screened in the East of the West competition at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival and won the Grand Prix at the Odesa International Film Festival. It was Belarus’s first entry for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film in 22 years. Zhuk directed and wrote the teleplay for an episode of the Apple TV+ series Little America (2020), based on her own experiences. She has also directed episodes and seasons of series including Russian Affairs (2020) for Amazon and Zato for Netflix.
