Assiya Issemberdiyeva

Assiya Issemberdiyeva is a Kazakh film critic and researcher. She is completing her PhD at Queen Mary University of London, where her doctoral thesis examines representations of Central Asia in Soviet wartime cinema. Her broader research interests include contemporary global cinema and art cinema, as well as postcolonial, decolonial, and feminist film theories. She is a member of the Kazakhstan Film Critics Association, curator of Kazakh Film Week in London (2019, 2021), and producer-author of the KinoScope video-essay series (El Arna, 2022–23). Her writing has appeared in both media outlets and academic journals, including Azattyq (RFE/RL); Qalam Global; Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television; Apparatus; Central Asian Survey; Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema; and The Calvert Journal. She has authored a film analysis course for emerging critics and teaches documentary filmmaking at Suleiman Demirel University.