Elena Andreicheva

Andreicheva was born and raised in Kyiv, Ukraine. After graduating from a local school in 1995, she moved to the United Kingdom at the age of 11.^[2][1] Later, she studied physics at Imperial College London, graduating with a Bachelor of Science, and then a master's degree in Science Communication.^[3] Despite loving science and majoring in physics in college, she decided to study Science Communication in her master's program since she liked "writing and learning science more rather than being a scientist".^[2][4][5]

Andreicheva worked in the United Kingdom after graduating. She worked in TV film production beginning in 2006.^[3] She was assistant director to Rebecca Marshall on a documentary titled The Forest in Me. The film was shot in Siberia and followed seventy-year old Agafia Lykova, a woman living a two-weeks walk away from the nearest person, virtually a recluse from the Stalin era.^[6] She also helped fact check for Nick Rosen's book How to Live Off-Grid.^[7]

In 2016, Andreicheva was the director of a documentary titled Polish Go Home, about a "Polish job-seeker returning home from London to reconnect with his family". It was the first time she directed a film.^[2][8] Later, she was the producer of the 2019 documentary film Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You're a Girl), for which she and Carol Dysinger won the (Oscar) Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject at the 92nd Academy Awards.^{[9][10][11][12]} Her Oscar outfit was made sustainably and she related that to her work "dealing with inequality and injustice".^[13] On winning the Oscar, she became the first female winner of Ukrainian origin since the country gained independence.^[8] She spoke at the Athens Science Festival in 2021 on how documentary film can help people understand science and technology.^[3]

In 2026, it is confirmed that Andreicheva is the director and the producer of a new documentary, Intelligence Rising.^[14][15]