They work with hybrid forms of film, performance, installation and text, developing projects with a documentary, site-specific and collaborative approach, and image-making as care and resistance to loss at the centre.

My practice was shaped by the AIDS crisis and state violence in my native Russia, migration and war, non-binary queer experience, and a mixed-minority background, Jewish and (Indigenous) Tatar. It explores how to mourn ungrievable lives: collectively, artistically, and in cross-border solidarity.

I make films as lover, griever, performer, survivor and witness.

I draw on experimental documentary forms, polyphonic storytelling, and the erotic moving body as affective media of care, delegated mourning, engaged witnessing and cultural memory.

With a focus on affective politics and ethics of representation, my work delves into grief, gender-based violence, diasporic, queer and trans experiences, social movements and DIY community rituals, forms of kinship and togetherness, and the post-socialist and migrant condition.

Grief here is entangled with eros, glamour, celebration and the grotesque – as forms of protest in marginalised communities, and a chance to transform social violence.

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Theo studied Art in Context at the Berlin University of the Arts, visual art and philosophy at Bard College Berlin, film at the Russian national film school VGIK, and trained in dance, performance and physical theatre.

Their projects have been shown internationally, from community spaces to established institutions, among them the Athens Biennale, Thessaloniki Queer Arts Festival, Tanzkongress at Staatstheater Mainz, silent green and Klosterruine Berlin.

They are active in political documentary film, and for over a decade have worked in social aid contexts with migrants, refugees and survivors of gender-based violence.