Will Jones
Her athletic discipline shows up in the moments that matter most on set: safety, clarity, and fast decisions
As Elizaveta Dyachkova explains it, a film set can absorb chaos until it cannot. Sometimes the moment arrives without warning, and everyone looks to the person whose job is to decide.
On the feature All You Have, that moment came on a mountain during a hiking scene. It had been a hot, sunny day with no storm warnings. Then Dyachkova heard thunder in the distance.
“People think danger announces itself,” she says. “Sometimes it does not. Sometimes you get a sound, and you have minutes.”
She was the First Assistant Director. Her job was the schedule, the plan, the communication, and the safety. She tracked the lightning using a weather app and made a fast decision: shut down the production and evacuate everyone from the top of the mountain to the parking lot below.
“There was no debate,” she says. “We were too exposed. The only responsible thing was to get people down.”
The crew cleared the area safely before the storm fully hit. It is the kind of story that never appears in a finished film, but it is the kind of decision that reveals the real craft behind filmmaking. The work is not only artistic. It is logistical, physical, and human.
Dyachkova’s calm under pressure did not start in film. It was trained into her long before she moved to the United States. She grew up in Saint Petersburg as a professional acrobatic Rock’n’Roll dancer and became a two-time European Champion, as well as a World and Russian Champion. The sport taught her to treat safety as part of excellence, not a separate concern.
“In athletics, discipline is not a personality trait,” she says. “It is a requirement. You learn punctuality, teamwork, and how to stay composed when adrenaline is high. Those habits translate directly to set life.”
Her path to filmmaking began with an abrupt stop. At sixteen, she suffered a career-ending injury when she broke her leg. She spent months at home in a cast, unable to move, with time as her only resource. During that period, she started watching films obsessively and became drawn to how images are constructed and how stories are built visually.
After attending a two-week summer film school in London, she saw filmmaking up close and fell in love with the process. At seventeen, she moved alone to Boca Raton, Florida, to finish high school in the United States while completing her final Russian grade online and earning two diplomas. Her family remained in Saint Petersburg while she built a new life on her own.
“I was learning everything at once,” she says. “A new country, a new school system, and a new craft. It was intense, but it also made me more focused.”
In December 2020, she was accepted into NYU Tisch’s Film and TV program. She arrived as a freshman who had never read a script before and had to learn the language of film from the ground up. Four years later, she graduated as a First Assistant Director, director, writer, and producer, having worked on numerous narrative films and professional sets.
She discovered something specific about herself in that process. Her strength was directing, working with people, shaping performances, and seeing the bigger picture. In parallel, her athletic discipline translated naturally into AD work.
“As a First AD, you are the bridge,” she says. “You create structure without limiting creativity. You keep communication clean. You protect the energy of the set so the work can stay focused.”
That is why the lightning story matters. It captures the part of her job that is easy to overlook. She is often brought onto projects with complex logistics, tight schedules, or challenging shooting conditions, where the work is to keep a team moving efficiently without compromising safety.
“Many productions struggle not because of a lack of talent,” she says. “They struggle because coordination breaks down. That is where I come in.”
Her feature credits underscore that trajectory. All You Have, directed by Erika Lynn Jolie, is currently in post-production and stars Ashley Brooke, Lilian Rebelo, and Ian Brownhill. She is also attached as First Assistant Director on The Phone Booth, in pre-production and set to shoot next fall, written and directed by Trevor Siegel with a cast that includes Gordon Clapp, Naheem Garcia, Lilian Rebelo, Ian Brownhill, Anthony Carvello, and Michelle Dunker-Arkin.
Outside feature work, she directs her own projects, including White Nights, shot on 16mm and selected for the New York International Film Festival, and La Fleur Pousse, co-directed with Luca Csathy in August 2025 and now preparing for its festival run. She also co-wrote and co-directed a commercial for Pommes Frites through her role at 5th Sense Creative.
Dyachkova calls herself a filmmaker first. But the people around her often describe her as the person who makes the filmmaking possible. Not because she wants control, but because she brings steadiness when the day gets sharp.
“On set, people do not need more noise,” she says. “They need clarity and steadiness, especially when things go wrong.”
The lightning did not become a dramatic legend on her tongue. She tells it plainly, like a professional who knows what the job requires. The story ends with people getting down safely, the crew protected, and the work able to continue another day.
“It is not about being heroic,” she says. “It is about being responsible.”
For more information, please visit Elizaveta Dyachkova’s Instagram.