Olga Birzul is a film curator and culture manager. She started working for Ukrainian cultural media as a journalist and editor. In 2009, she joined the Docudays UA IHRDFF team. During ten years, she worked as a programmer of the festival and coordinator of the education platform Docu/Class. Additionally she curated special programs as well as Docu/Art section about interconnection of art and cinema.

Between 2016 and 2018, she coordinated the festival’s cultural diplomacy project See Ukraine. From 2019 to 2021, she was the head of Films at the Ukrainian Institute, a public institution that establishes international culture connections between Ukraine and the world.

She is an author of the lectures about history and theory of non-fiction films as well as an expert in various projects for documentary filmmakers. Since full-scale Russian invasion, she curates film programs about Ukraine for international cultural projects. In 2024, her first book for teenagers was published, which tells about the theory and history of cinema.

Selected curated programs:

2023, Vienna — Special program The Context of Truth for IHRFF This human world in partnership with Documenting Ukraine program and The Institute for Human Sciences (IWM).

2023, Kyiv — Non-competition program The Editing Transition for HRDFF Docudays UA offered a different look at the art of editing and cinema in general. 

2022, Munich — Film program for The Munich Literature Festival as a part of Be free — retelling Central Europe program, curated by the Ukrainian writer Tanja Maljarchuk.

2022, Milan — Special program Art and risk in between with co-curator Yuliia Kovalenko for Ukrainian Pavilion at the XXXIII Triennial exhibition.