Sergei Loznitsa (b. 1964, Belarus; raised in Kyiv) is a Ukrainian director of Belarusian origin known for both documentary and fiction films. A former applied‑mathematician who worked on AI research, he studied cinema at Moscow’s VGIK before turning to filmmaking in the mid‑1990s. His documentaries (Maidan, Austerlitz) and features (My Joy, In the Fog, The History of Natural Destruction) offer nuanced, often bleak examinations of post‑Soviet politics, memory, collective history and the erosion of truth in contemporary society.