Varya Yakovleva

Varya Yakovleva is a Russian illustrator, animator and animation director, born in Saratov in 1983. She graduated from the art faculty of VGIK (the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography) and completed the animation directing course at School-Studio SHAR, and she is a member of the Moscow Union of Artists. From 2013 she worked as production designer on Andrey Khrzhanovsky's animated feature The Nose, or the Conspiracy of Mavericks, and she also illustrates books and teaches. Since the war in Ukraine she has lived in France as a member of the Agency of Artists in Exile; her drawing-based approach, which she calls “sketch animation”, runs through films such as Anna, Cat-and-Mouse (2020) and Oneluv (2022).