Alina Kotova
Director/ Performer/Composer
Multidisciplinary Artist

Alina Kotova is a Paris-based director, composer, screenwriter and librettist, music dramaturg whose interdisciplinary practice bridges theatre, music, and moving image. She is a graduate of GITIS (Theatre History, Theory & Criticism, 2016) and Boris Yukhananov’s Studio of Individual Directing (2019). In parallel with her studies, she worked as an assistant director at the Stanislavsky Electrotheatre, published in the contemporary art journal CINE FANTOM, and curated special issues and screenings there for emerging experimental filmmakers. She has also contributed to collective film anthologies and chain videos (exquisite-corpse method), organized festivals, directed audio plays, and appeared on stage as an actor.
Her debut short film Eight Images from the Life of Nastya Sokolova (2018) premiered at IFFR and received the Silver Eye Award (Institute of Documentary Film, Czech Republic). The same year she worked as director, performer, and singer in the collective Orphic Games. Punk Macramé at the Stanislavsky Electrotheatre (Golden Mask nomination; Yukhananov’s studio, 2016–2019). Her directorial production SALOMÉ (2019) has since evolved into an ongoing experimental opera cycle, with Kotova serving throughout as director, composer, music dramaturg, and performer.
In 2022, following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, she left Russia and continued the project through site-specific iterations across several countries (US, Georgia, France, Montenegro, Armenia, Kazakhstan); in 2024 it appeared in digital form as Decadence Rave Opera Salome, and a new stage iteration is in development for 2026. In 2020 she launched the long-term project YASON, exploring the boundary between dreams and “official history.” In 2024 she premiered Trip Opera: The Route (libretto by Daniil Zinchenko; Wikimapia comments as source material) as composer and performer, and in 2025 the documentary spoken opera Transposition premiered at the Amsterdam Fringe Festival, with Kotova as librettist and artistic collaborator.

Over the years she has taken part in laboratories and workshops with Arthur Nauzyciel, AJ Weissbard, Romeo Castellucci, Tim Supple, Denis Maillefer, Antoine Gindt, Yavor Gardev, Ilya Kozin (a student of Anatoly Vasiliev and coach to his actors), Dmitri Kourliandski, among others.

SELECTED FESTIVALS:
- GoEast Film FESTIVAL / Germany, 2017
- 47th International Rotterdam Film Festival / Netherlands, 2018
- 15th IndieLisboa International Film Festival / Portugal, 2018
- BOGOTÁ SHORT FILM FESTIVAL/Colombia, 2019
- 15th VIENNA SHORTS/Austria/2018
- Ji. Hlava International Documentary Film Festival/2018
- Territory Theatre Festival/Russia/2018
- Golden Mask Theatre Festival/Russia/2019
- METAKANSK Festival/NY/2024
- Rubezh Festival/Tbilisi/2024

SIGNIFICANT PRIZES:
- Institute of Documentary Film/ Winner - Silver Eye Award / Czech Republic, 2018
- International Film Festival “Spirit of Fire”/Russia/2018

PROJECTS

Theatre & Multidisciplinary projects:

Films & Video:

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