塔拉斯·托缅科，The Ukrainian director was born in Kyiv in 1976 to the family of the poet Mykola Tomenko. His grandfather died in World War II snd his grandmother died at an early age due to hard labour on a collective farm. He studied in the faculty of philology at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and at the Kyiv National I. K. Karpenko-Kary Theatre, Cinema and Television University. In 2004, he attended the campus of Berlinale Talents.