---
name: "Yana Gorskaya"
canonical: "https://film.one/person/yana-gorskaya"
fi1m_id: "yana-gorskaya"
imdb_id: "nm1251520"
tmdb_id: 1404683
wikidata_id: "Q8048199"
roles: ["Director"]
born: "27 August 1973"
reviewed_on_fi1m: 5
average_fi1m_score: 70
average_as: "director"
average_over: 2
updated: "2026-10-13T21:55:13.360613+00:00"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Yana Gorskaya

## Identity

Yana Gorskaya

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/person/yana-gorskaya
- **Type:** Person
- **Fi1m ID:** yana-gorskaya
- **IMDb ID:** nm1251520
- **TMDB ID:** 1404683
- **Wikidata ID:** Q8048199
- **Same entity:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yana_Gorskaya, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q8048199, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1251520/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/1404683

Director. Born 27 August 1973 in USSR [now Russia].

## Details

- **Work:** Director
- **Born:** 27 August 1973, USSR [now Russia]
- **Active:** 2016–present
- **Titles on Fi1m:** 5: 2 directing, 3 crew
- **Frequently works with:** [Taika Waititi](https://film.one/person/taika-waititi.md), [Iain Morris](https://film.one/person/iain-morris.md), [Rachel House](https://film.one/person/rachel-house.md), [Sydney Freeland](https://film.one/person/sydney-freeland.md), [Tazbah Chavez](https://film.one/person/tazbah-chavez.md)
- **Average Fi1m score:** 70, as director, over 2 titles
- **Fi1m score by decade:** 2010s 82 (1), 2020s 69 (4)
- **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yana_Gorskaya, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q8048199, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1251520/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/1404683

## Streaming the US now

- **Disney+:** [*Reservation Dogs*](https://film.one/tv/reservation-dogs.md) (86), [*Next Goal Wins*](https://film.one/film/next-goal-wins.md) (50)
- **Apple TV:** [*Star Trek: Strange New Worlds*](https://film.one/tv/star-trek-strange-new-worlds.md) (77), [*Time Bandits*](https://film.one/tv/time-bandits-2024.md) (62)
- **Peacock:** [*Hunt for the Wilderpeople*](https://film.one/film/hunt-for-the-wilderpeople.md) (82)

For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country.

## Fi1m on Yana Gorskaya

> An editor who learned patience on documentaries and spent it on Taika Waititi, Yana Gorskaya cuts comedy so that scenes run on past their jokes. It is the right instinct more often than not, and she has turned it into a directing career without much fuss.

Watch a scene in *Reservation Dogs* end. The joke lands and the shot stays, a beat longer than most comedies would allow, long enough for the people on screen to take in what has just been said. That is the habit, and it is where Yana Gorskaya's taste is easiest to see. She learned it on documentaries, beginning with Jeffrey Blitz's *Spellbound* in 2002, where the job is to find the story in hours of people being themselves, and she carried it into fiction when she started cutting for Taika Waititi on *Eagle vs Shark* in 2007.

She has edited or advised on nearly all of his films since, among them *What We Do in the Shadows* (2014), *Hunt for the Wilderpeople* (2016) and *Next Goal Wins* (2023), with improvised material and mockumentary tone as the common thread. When *What We Do in the Shadows* became a series in 2019, Waititi and Jemaine Clement asked her to cut the pilot, and she stayed to direct 22 episodes across six seasons while going on editing. From there came episodes of *Trial & Error*, of *Star Trek: Strange New Worlds* (2022) and of *Time Bandits* (2024). It is a rare route, the cutting room to the director's chair on the same show, and she took it without anyone much noticing, which is roughly what an editor is trained to do.

The film of hers we like best is *Hunt for the Wilderpeople*. It moved us more than we expected, and a good deal of what moved us was what the cutting left alone: the awkwardness the film lets linger between Julian Dennison and Sam Neill before either finds something to say. Gorskaya, Tom Eagles and Luke Haigh keep the chapters moving and never trim those exchanges. *Reservation Dogs* runs on the same principle, and we would add that it is occasionally the slow one. Letting a scene breathe is a virtue right up until the audience can predict it.

*Next Goal Wins* is the case against. Four editors are credited, Gorskaya among them, and the film has the rhythm of four people who never compared notes; the football is cut so fast we rarely see a move from start to finish. Whose choices those were we cannot tell from outside the cutting room, which is the difficulty with judging any editor on a shared credit. Her *Strange New Worlds* episode is competent and we did not notice her in it, which on a series built on house style is neither praise nor complaint.

She is, on the evidence, a patient cutter in an impatient trade, at her best when a director trusts her to leave things alone. The open question is what she does when the footage is hers from the start, and *What We Do in the Shadows* is where to go to find out.

## Biography

Yana Gorskaya is a Russian-American film and television editor, director and producer. Born in the Soviet Union in 1973, she immigrated to the United States with her mother at the age of six. She holds a BA from Columbia University and an MFA from the University of Southern California.

Gorskaya began her feature career editing the documentary *Spellbound* (2002), for which she received an American Cinema Editors Award. She has edited nearly all of Taika Waititi’s films, including *Hunt for the Wilderpeople* (2016) and *Next Goal Wins* (2023), as well as other features such as *Celeste & Jesse Forever* (2012) and *Table 19* (2017). She has also edited episodes of series including *What We Do in the Shadows* (2019), *Reservation Dogs* (2021) and *I Am Not Okay with This* (2020).

Gorskaya directs and executive produces *What We Do in the Shadows* (2019–), for which she has received multiple Emmy nominations. She lives in Los Angeles.

*Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com.*

## On Fi1m (5)

### Directed (2) — the average rests on these

- *Time Bandits* (2024), Fi1m 62, Director — [page](https://film.one/tv/time-bandits-2024.md)
- *Star Trek: Strange New Worlds* (2022), Fi1m 77, Director — [page](https://film.one/tv/star-trek-strange-new-worlds.md)

### Crew (3)

- *Next Goal Wins* (2023), Fi1m 50, Editor — [page](https://film.one/film/next-goal-wins.md)
- *Reservation Dogs* (2021), Fi1m 86, Editor — [page](https://film.one/tv/reservation-dogs.md)
- *Hunt for the Wilderpeople* (2016), Fi1m 82, Editor — [page](https://film.one/film/hunt-for-the-wilderpeople.md)

## Complete filmography (23)

Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page.

- *The 'Burbs* (2026), series, Director
- *Stumble* (2025), series, Co-Executive Producer, Director
- *The Paper* (2025), series, Director
- *St. Denis Medical* (2024), series, Director
- *Time Bandits* (2024), series, Director — Fi1m 62, [page](https://film.one/tv/time-bandits-2024.md)
- *Next Goal Wins* (2023), Editor — Fi1m 50, [page](https://film.one/film/next-goal-wins.md)
- *Star Trek: Strange New Worlds* (2022), series, Director — Fi1m 77, [page](https://film.one/tv/star-trek-strange-new-worlds.md)
- *Reservation Dogs* (2021), series, Editor — Fi1m 86, [page](https://film.one/tv/reservation-dogs.md)
- *I Am Not Okay with This* (2020), series, Editor
- *What We Do in the Shadows* (2019), series, Editor, Director, Co-Executive Producer, Executive Producer
- *Flight of the Conchords: Live in London* (2018), Consulting Editor
- *Trial & Error* (2017), series, Director
- *Table 19* (2017), Editor
- *Off the Rails* (2016), Editorial Consultant
- *Hunt for the Wilderpeople* (2016), Editor — Fi1m 82, [page](https://film.one/film/hunt-for-the-wilderpeople.md)
- *What We Do in the Shadows* (2014), Editor
- *Celeste & Jesse Forever* (2012), Editor
- *Fame High* (2012), Editor
- *Smart People* (2008), Editor
- *Rocket Science* (2007), Editor
- *City of Night: The Making of 'Collateral'* (2004), Consulting Editor
- *In the Name of Love* (2003), Editor
- *Spellbound* (2002), Editor

## Gallery

- ![Yana Gorskaya](https://film.one/media/person/14978/gallery-da71abe09b6f.jpg) Yana Gorskaya — Kebutchini, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/Yana_Gorskaya_editor.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled)
- ![Gorskaya with Blitz and Welch at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival.](https://film.one/media/person/14978/gallery-4d645e6d1fec.jpg) Gorskaya with Blitz and Welch at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. — James Hoppe, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/Blitz_welch_gorskaya.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled)

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/yana-gorskaya