Natalia & Sieva met in Berlin, a hub for artists from all over the world. Their first encounter began with their collaboration on the documentary Postcards From Ukraine. Since then, they have continued working together, expanding their storytelling, cinematography, editing, and color skills. In 2016, they founded blitzar media and worked on feature-length documentaries, 16mm experimental films, crowdfunding videos, etc. They are also known for their trailers for art galleries, theatre or dance performances, etc. Blitzar media style is based on a complementary approach, where the opposites go hand in hand to make the subjects more complex and captivating.
Sieva Diamantakos
Sieva was born in Rome and grew up in a coastal village near Genoa (Liguria). He began making films while studying at the University of Bologna. His major was film criticism with an essay on the hero’s journey in the two choral films Short Cuts by Robert Altman and Magnolia by Paul Thomas Anderson.
After moving to Genoa, he became a member of the electronic band port-royal and was the group’s official video maker and VJ. Inspired by the group’s tours of Eastern Europe, he moved to Berlin and found a way to work between the German capital and Kyiv. There he shot his first film Postcards from Ukraine about the beginning of the crisis between Ukraine and Russia. His second film Peilhorn – Dein Drama in V Akten about an illegal club in Berlin was produced entirely by Sieva and was recently released on youtube. And They Will Talk About Us is his third film as a director. Sieva’s films always have a social approach, in which political and economic dynamics play the most important role. From there, the works expand and touch on the existential level. The direction is minimalist in terms of the means used, but often poetic. The texts alternate between tragic moments and others with lighter tones.
Natalia Fentisova
Natalia’s childhood in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and her subsequent move to Finland in adulthood shaped her unique artistic vision. She further honed her skills by studying Art and Film at the Academy of Arts in Italy & Germany and a transformative exchange year at the
California Institute of the Arts in the Film and Video program under
the mentorship of Betzy Bromberg. After graduating, she co-founded
Blitzar Media, a production company, with film director Sieva
Diamantakos. Natalia collaborated on several documentaries directed by Sieva – as an editor of “Postcards from Ukraine” and as
a producer and writer on “Au Revel” and “And They’ll Talk About Us.” Natalia uses film, video installation, and audiovisual performance media in her work, where she explores psychological and physical transformations and questions of cultural, social, and gender identities. She contributed to the experimental film scene by directing a few short fiction experimental films shot on 16mm and has been a member of a non-profit film collective, LaborBerlin. She has also taught several workshops on D-I-Y film practices and worked as a film projectionist.
Postcards From Ukraine (directed by Sieva Diamantakos; edited by Natalia Fentisova) 2016 Mimesi’S Culture, Hildebrandt Films, Paul Thiltgs Distributions.
Selected @ Perso Film Festival (2016; Perugia, Italy); Molodist Film Festival (2016; Kyiv, Ukraine); Winner @ AmiiWork Fest (2017; Vilnius, Lituania)
Peilhorn – Dein Drama in V Akten (directed by Sieva Diamantakos; edited by Natalia Fentisova) 2022, Blitzar Media.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KZICA3HwwQ
Atlas (directed by Ioannis Katseris, Camera and editing by Sieva Diamantakos) 2022 Blitzar Media
Selected @ Chania International Film Festival (2023; Chania, Greece), Doc Fest (2023; Chalkida, Greece)
And They Will Talk About Us (directed by Sieva Diamantakos, written by Sieva Diamantakos and Natalia Fentisova) 2022 Directory Films, Blitzar Media, Fore Films, Kino Artil and supported by Ukrainian Film Foundation
Selected @ Mykolaichuk-open (2022, Chernivtsi, Ukraine), ArtDocFest (2024; Riga, Latvia), Bergamo Film Meeting (2024; Bergamo, Italy)
What Matters (directed by Natalia Fentisova, written by Sieva Diamantakos and Natalia Fentisova) in process supported by the Finnish Film Foundation