Alumna Darya Zhuk '15 will direct several episodes of ZATO, a forthcoming series from Netflix.
Set during the peak of uncertainty following the fall of the Soviet Union, ZATO is a neo-noir detective drama that follows a young, ambitious journalist as she teams up with a desperate cop to investigate the disappearance of a child in a restricted access town where exposing the wrong secret can get you killed.
Zhuk has been announced as one of the series' directors alongside Stanislav Libin.
“Misha Shpritz (series head writer) and I have been exploring the possibility of a collaboration for years,” Zhuk said in the official press release. “ZATO has been close to my heart from the start in terms of its tone, atmosphere, and characters. The world around this project continues to explore many of the themes important to me as an auteur: unconventional complex characters and specifically, the charismatic fearless female protagonist and an exploration of the post-Soviet heritage.”
ZATO is currently in production and will launch on Netflix worldwide. The show's premiere date is still to be announced.
Belarus-born director Darya Zhuk discovered filmmaking while studying Economics at Harvard. After beginning her career at HBO as a business analyst, she went on to earn her MFA degree with honors from Columbia University, focusing on Directing. Her award-winning debut feature film, Crystal Swan (2018), was Belarus' first entry into the Academy Awards’ Best Foreign Language category in 22 years. Zhuk’s short films have screened at festivals such as SXSW, Tarkovsky, Atlanta, Palm Springs, Oaxaca, Santa Fe Independent Film Festival, and more. She received the Nick Louvel Breakthrough Filmmaker Award, Best Female Writer-Director Award from New York Women in Film and Television in 2015, and was nominated for Best Female Director by the Adrienne Shelly Foundation. Additionally, she is the winner of such prestigious film grants as the New York State Council for the Arts grant and the Panavision Emerging Filmmaker grant.
