DANA ZIYASHEVA

Born in Kazakhstan and based in Los Angeles, Dana Ziyasheva is a multifaceted screenwriter with a background in journalism, political science, and cross-cultural communication. A former UNESCO Adviser stationed in Paris, Northern Iraq, Beijing, and Costa Rica, she infuses her storytelling with the breadth of her global experience and humanitarian work.

Dana’s screenplay Dragon Angel won Best Project for Co-Production at the XV Shanghai Film Festival. She has written and directed Defenders of Life (2014), an indigenous drama about child-brides in Costa Rica that won Best Foreign Film at multiple festivals, Greatland (2020), a dystopian fantasy satire that premiered at the Moscow International Film Festival, and Washed Out (2025), a Woman-vs-AI horror short recognized for Best Actress at the Hollywood Reel Independent Film Festival.

 

She also adapted her thriller novel How I Solved the Homeless Crisis in Cali into a fiction podcast, part of her ongoing work bringing her novels to screen and television. With a background in editing and VFX, Ziyasheva crafts worlds that arrive on the page ready for the screen, with the ability to support them through postproduction and promotion.