Biography
Lesya Kalynska is an award-winning film director, screenwriter, and producer known for her powerful storytelling and innovative filmmaking. Originally from Kyiv, Ukraine, she is currently based in New York, where she develops compelling projects through her production company, Pomegranate Studios. Kalynska is best known for writing, directing, and producing the critically acclaimed feature documentary A Rising Fury, which was long-listed for the 96th Academy Awards. Filmed over nearly a decade (2013-2022), the documentary chronicles Russia's war against Ukraine, exploring themes of love, revolution, and war. A Rising Fury premiered at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival and earned multiple accolades, including the Supreme Jury Award and Best International Director Award at the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival. The film has been showcased at major international festivals across four continents and garnered nominations for the Bronze Horse Award at the Stockholm International Film Festival, Best Documentary at the Warsaw International Film Festival, and the Golden Duke Award at the Odessa International Film Festival, among others. Described by Film Threat Magazine as "one of the best films of the year" and rated 10/10 by film critic Bobby LePire, A Rising Fury has received widespread critical acclaim.
Kalynska holds an MFA in Directing and Writing from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and a Ph.D. in Slavic Literatures and Languages from Ukraine. She has authored numerous publications, screenplays, and scholarly works on postmodernism in literature and journalistic articles on film and music. The subject of her thesis manuscript was Yuri Andruhovych's Prose as a Phenomenon of Postmodernism. Kalynska achieved early success in the U.S. with her award-winning short narrative film The Balloonist (2007) and as a producer on The Debt (2006), directed by Levan Koguashvili, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. She also received the prestigious Hollywood Foreign Press Association Production Award (Golden Globes) for her feature-length documentary In the Land of the Lost Crusaders, which she directed and co-produced. Early in her directing career, Kalynska worked in various creative roles, focusing on producing, writing, editing, and acting. In 2008, she teamed up with director Oles Sanin to develop the original treatment for the narrative feature The Guide. She worked with the film's creative team in Los Angeles during the early stages of the story and treatment development. Set in the early 1930s during Soviet-occupied Ukraine, the film explores political and social upheaval, including industrialization, forced collectivization, and the Holodomor-a genocidal famine inflicted by Moscow. The Guide became Ukraine's official submission for Best Foreign Language Film at the 87th Academy Awards in 2014. Kalynska was a leading actress in Ama at Sea (2010), directed by Mahalia Cohen, and had a supporting role in The Green Jacket (2013), directed by Volodymyr Tyhyj. Other notable works include editing Overdrive: Istanbul in the New Millennium (2011), directed by Aslihan Unalde, and producing Salt in the Air (2013), directed by Enrico Cullen. In Ukraine, Kalynska directed the docuseries Level of Secrecy 18, featuring historical reenactments and archival footage to uncover untold World War II stories. The series, which aired on the popular Ukrainian TV channel 1+1 in 2011, resonated deeply with audiences. After working on several documentaries exploring dramatic stories from Eastern Europe and Ukraine's complex past, Kalynska returned to narrative work, focusing on lighter, more adventurous, poetic, and relationship-driven projects. She directed the short film Helen, a psychological drama set in Brooklyn, New York, which was nominated for the Golden Duke at the Odesa International Film Festival in 2013. At the same time, she was in post-production on a documentary about the ancient martial art of Khevsureti in the Caucasian mountains of Georgia, while writing a historical drama series set in 17th-century France and England. In 2013, Kalynska's creative plans were interrupted by the unrest in her home city of Kyiv. During the Revolution of Dignity, she initiated A Rising Fury and continued to follow her subjects through the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war. Since 2013, Lesya has divided her time between the U.S. and Ukraine, filming and editing in both countries. She is also deeply involved in cultural diplomacy, traveling internationally with film campaigns to promote Ukraine.
Kalynska co-produced the feature-length narrative sports drama The Driven, starring David Zayas (Dexter, The Expendables), which premiered at the 25th Dances With Films Festival - NYC edition in 2022. Her next documentary, currently in progress with the working title Before the Dawn, explores the preservation of culture and democracy in Ukraine, focusing on the bravery of Ukrainians fighting for their freedom. The research for this project examines how the war has driven individuals to reject their Soviet past, rediscover their cultural roots, reclaim their heritage, and build a vision for the future.
