Feruza Ruzieva is a director, screenwriter, actress, and producer. She was born in 1983 in Navoi — a Soviet industrial city in the Bukhara region of Uzbekistan, built like a small Leningrad, full of chemical factories and empty of theatres. Her mother is Iranian, her father is Uzbek. She grew up Russian-speaking, in a neighbourhood of Bukharian Jews, Tatars, and Koreans. She has always lived between worlds.
Her first audience was her Alabai dog, in her parents’ fruit garden. She invented everything herself — dances, costumes, performances. Her mother sewed the costumes. Soon it became something the whole family knew: when guests arrive, Feruza performs. She built her own stage before she knew what a stage was.
The stage saved her. She was eleven when she first needed saving — and she told no one. But she was not alone. There was music, there was her dog, there was the garden, and there was the stage she had built for herself. Solitude was never loneliness. It was where she learned to listen to herself.
In 1999, at sixteen, she represented Uzbekistan as a solo artist at the Festival of Emperor Yuandi in Beijing, China — entirely self-taught, from a city with no dance school. She also performed at the Slavic Bazaar festival in Vitebsk and at international festivals on the Black Sea. The following year, the city of Navoi nominated her for the Zulfiya Prize, a national award named after the beloved Uzbek poet. On those enormous stages, surrounded by artists from all over the world, she understood something that has never left her: she has no borders. Not in her head. Not in her feelings.
Her acting career spans theatre and screen. She performed at the Centro de Artes Dramáticas (TsIM) in Moscow — including in the production Ne Format, whose title she invented herself. In 2016, she created and performed a solo piece as author and actress at the Documentary Theatre Festival La Caza de la Realidad in Moscow — writing, staging, and performing without a director. In 2018, she received the Premio Kaplja Award for Best Actress for her role in the Russian TV series Na Krayu. In 2022, she performed at La Biennale di Venezia, playing two parallel roles simultaneously and co-creating the material on set. Her work has been featured in Moskvichka magazine and GQ.ru.
Her debut short film MY ROOM IN BLOOM is a two-time award winner: Best Short Film at the Madrid Film Awards (MADFA®), Madrid, Spain (2025), and Award Winner at the Paris Play Film Festival, France (2024). The film was also an official selection at Capri, Hollywood — The International Film Festival, Italy. Her second short film INVISIBLE — a psychological existential drama about a woman whose last territory is her own body — is currently in production (2026). She writes, directs, and produces her own films.
There is a detail she cannot ignore: the name her parents had prepared for her, before she was born, was Muzaffar — the same name as the son of her Iranian great-grandmother, who gave birth to him by the Emir of Bukhara. That son became the next Emir. His son was Alimkhan — the last Emir of Bukhara. Her great-grandmother was an ordinary woman, a slave from Mashhad. History barely recorded her name. Feruza cannot find the full truth of her story. Too much was erased. This impossibility of finding the truth is at the core of why she makes films.
She has always been out of format. In Uzbekistan, in Moscow, now in Madrid. She is Iranian-Uzbek, raised Russian-speaking, working in English. She does not separate acting from directing from writing — they are parts of the same body, and she needs all of them to feel whole. Her approach to acting is rooted in the technique of Nikolai Demidov, which she continues to explore alongside teacher Andrei Malaev-Babel.
She makes films about the women history forgot. About the truths that were buried. About the love that survived anyway.

Press & Media:

Moskvichka Magazine (2016):
moscvichka.ru/moscvichka/2016/10/24/feruza-ruzieva-ya-mislyu-i-chuvstvuyu-po-russki-15321.html

WomanHit Interview (2018):
womanhit.ru/stars/interview/2018-09-13-feruza-ruzieva-poljubila-moskvu-posle-rozhdenija-syna/

IMDb:
imdb.com/name/nm5425092