Anastasija Harrowna Bräuniger was born in Berlin and grew up in Russia, England and Germany. She works as an actress and director - combining documentary formats and different artistic disciplines such as the performing arts, installation and video - in order to create poetic discourse spaces.

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Anastasija studied acting at Hochschule für Musik und Theater Rostock and was awarded the Proskenion Nachwuchsförderpreis für Darstellende Künste (a young actors/actresses award) in 2014. After graduating with a Diploma she worked as an actress at Stadttheater Heilbronn, where she also produced own artistic works such as a walk-in installation questioning the German asylum policies and procedures. In 2016 she began studying directing at Hochschule für Schauspielkunst Ernst Busch Berlin and she co-founded the collective FLUGWERK, providing a rehearsal stage for process-oriented work in theatre, performance and dance and using a innovated format of the Open Rehearsal. Out of her passion for communication, conflict management and working with groups in different contexts, she completed a one-year in-service mediation training at Mediationsbüro Mitte in 2019. Coming from a migration background and growing up in and moving between diverse cultures, Anastasija follows her interest working in different geographical and cultural contexts. Her directorial body of work reflects this interest in transnational connections and in the political dimension of theatre and theatre making. Parallel to her studies she shot two short films (CHAMPIONS in Iraq and INTERVIEW in Lebanon) which combined a social, theatre pedagogical approach and film. Both were nominated and awarded at international film festivals such as the Human Rights Film Festival San Sebastian. In 2020, she won the Regienachwuchswettbewerb at Theater Erlangen for her concept PROTEST4, which she staged the same year in cooperation with activists from the protest movements of 2019/2020 in Hongkong, Chile and Lebanon. The Goethe-Institut Chile and the Goethe-Institut Hong Kong supported the project. In May 2021, she completed her directing studies with the documentary theatre piece Heterotopia Moria. The production highlights human rights violations at the EU's external borders and discusses the development of EU asylum policies. 2022 she co-founded KITEFILMS with cinematographer and filmmaker Leonard Frederic Caspari to provide socially oriented organizations with documentary, advertising and campaign films, combining social, activistic and political objectives with an artistic claim. In 2022 she received the Elsa-Neumann-Fellowship. In 2023 she is invited to work at Theater Erlangen once more to create a documentary piece about Russias war of aggression in Ukraine: Kanal | канал - Ein Stück aus Erlangen am Europakanal, der nach ca. 2510 km ins Schwarze Meer fließt. As an ITI Academy Fellow of 2022-2023, she will also present a transdisciplinary installation at the International Theatre Institut Academy Week x Theater der Welt. Apart from that Anastasija will focus more on acting and performing and dedicate her time towards the medium film - as an actress and as a director. 

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Anastasija is based in Berlin and Rome.