Sergey Bukovsky was born in 1960 in Bashkiria, the autonomous republic of the former Soviet Union. That same year, his father, film director Anatoly Bukovsky, and mother, actress Nina Antonova, brought him to Kiev.

“There was always a crowd of guests in our one-room flat; they were my parents’ friends. They would come together to celebrate either the first or the last day of filming, or the presentation of a film to the State Film Committee of the USSR, or dubbing, or additional filming, or the long-awaited start of distribution. My first childhood memories are associated with a trip to Baturin, where my father shot the film “Buryan” (“The Weeds”). I remember the sugary-sweet smell of makeup, the noise of the lighting trucks, and my father shouting, “Action!” I remember crying when a heroine was “killed” and yelling, “Vermin!”

Sergey Bukovsky studied directing in the Film Department at the Karpenko-Karyi Kiev State Institute of Theatrical Arts. After serving in the Soviet Army, he worked at the Ukrainian documentary film studio for more than a decade.

The 20-minute black-and-white film “Tomorrow is a Holiday”, shot in the first years of perestroika, received critical acclaim from the press, the film community, and audiences. 

During his 325-year film career,  Bukovsky made approximately 40 documentary films.  Some of them received awards at prestigious international film festivals. They include:  “Tomorrow is a Holiday” (1987), “Roof” (1990), “Dislocation” (1992), “The Hyphen” (1992), “To Berlin!” (1995), “Vilen Kalyuta. Real Light” (2000), “Terra Vermelha. Red Land” (2001), and the 9-part documentary series for television “War. The Ukrainian Account,” which was awarded the National Taras Shevchenko Prize of Ukraine in 2004.

“The difficulty in talking about this film (“War. The Ukrainian Account”) is that it is not only important as a cinematographic or television event… In Sergey Bukovsky’s film, for the first time, Ukraine acquired its own history of War World II.   The history that was not rolled up into the ideological asphalt for a military parade… The history that was not hastily-fastened with white threads of politics… It is a genuine documentary epic, in which history is presented accurately: as the tragedy of millions of human lives bloodied by the tornado of war. It is a history of total betrayal. It is a history of a nation betrayed by its authorities. It is a history of a nation that betrayed its own past”.
(Anna Sherman, “Telekritika” / 08.11.2002)

From 1998 to 2003, Bukovsky taught courses in documentary directing at the Karpenko-Karyi Kiev State Institute of Theatrical Arts. His student Igor Strembitsky got Palm D’Or in Cannes in 2005 for his short documentary.

As a film director made about
40 documentaries including

Awards