About

Born in Germany, educated in Switzerland, Poland, and Russia, I have lived in many places, including China, The USA, and Canada. I am fluent in German, French, English, Polish, Russian, and I manage in spoken Chinese.

A few words about the film company, of which I am the director. Chemodan Films was created by Alexander Gershtein, Tracy McDonald. and myself in October 2005 in Toronto, Canada. “Chemodan” (pronounciation key: “ch [like “church”]-eh-mo-dunn”) is the Russian word for “suitcase.” One of the goals of our company is to produce documentary films on Russia, other territories of the former Soviet Union, and elsewhere, which explore the cultural, social, and political complexities of the present world. Chemodan Films privileges topics reflecting on the “deep country,” including geographical and social areas that are not part of the mainstream. We like remote settings people don't know much about. Besides producing documentaries, Chemodan Films is also establishing an archival depository of original film material, both contemporary and historical.

I just finished a film on the recent events in Kyrgyzstan, co-directed with Swiss and Kyrgyz journalists. I am also working on 2 other films: "Harbin Echoes" is a film about the Chinese city of Harbin engaged in a cultural dialogue with its foreign past. Another film in production tells about a "hunt," through archives and witnesses, of a 20th- century Russian national whose world was the “no place” of border crossings. Neither a fulltime diplomat nor spy, Roubakine positioned himself at the junction of much of the traffic between Paris and Moscow in the interwar years.

For more information, see: www.chemodanfilms.com