Shooting Sergei Minaev in Hong Kong

Some projects are work. This one was a reckoning with my own biography.

Sergei Minaev came to Hong Kong. We had three days to shoot an episode for his history channel. For anyone outside the Russian-speaking world: imagine if Anthony Bourdain wrote a bestselling novel about Moscow’s corporate elite, had it turned into a blockbuster film, hosted primetime television for a decade, then pivoted to building one of the largest independent history channels on YouTube. That’s the trajectory.

Who Sergei Minaev is

His debut novel “Духless” (Soulless, 2006) sold over a million copies and became the defining portrait of Moscow’s 2000s generation. Danila Kozlovsky starred in the film adaptation, which became one of Russia’s biggest box office hits. The sequel followed. Then came “The Telki,” another bestseller. Then television: he hosted shows on Channel One, ran “Minaev Live” on MTV Russia, co-founded Kontr TV.

But the pivot that matters most: in 2019 he launched his YouTube history channel. Not the kind where someone reads Wikipedia over stock footage. Proper research, cinematic production, on-location storytelling. Millions of subscribers. He turned historical documentary into a format that actually competes with entertainment.

The New York Times once called him “The Tortured Voice of Russia’s Lost Generation.” That was 2007. Almost twenty years later, he’s something else entirely: a media institution.

Why this was personal

I need to be honest about something. Minaev’s writing is the reason I started writing at all.

I was living in France as a teenager. A Ukrainian kid who didn’t speak French, trying to figure out who he was. Minaev’s books were the first time I saw someone write about the post-Soviet experience in a way that felt electric. Not nostalgic, not academic. Raw. Contemporary. Alive.

Because of those books, I picked up a pen. Ended up writing a column for a magazine based in Ukraine, filing from France. Eighteen years old, putting words together because a guy in Moscow made it look like the only thing worth doing.

And now I’m behind the camera, directing his shoot. The world is small and it doesn’t move in straight lines.

The shoot

Three days across Hong Kong. His history channel covers how cities were built, how empires rose and fell, how geography shapes power. Hong Kong is the perfect subject: a fishing village that became the gateway between East and West, a colonial outpost that reinvented itself as a global financial center, a city where every street corner has a story layered five deep.

We shot across Central, Sheung Wan, the harbour. Locations chosen for the way they compress history into single frames: colonial staircases next to neon markets, temples beside skyscrapers, traditional shops under construction cranes.

The video is still in production. When it drops, it’ll reach millions of viewers who’ve never thought about Hong Kong beyond what they see in news headlines. That’s what Minaev does: he makes history feel like it matters to you personally, right now.

The work

Direction, cinematography, location planning and production. Three shooting days. The kind of project where you don’t sleep much and you don’t need to, because the energy carries you.

He was generous with his time, sharp on set, and completely trusting of the team. That last part is rare with people who’ve been in front of cameras for twenty years. When the person in the frame trusts the person behind it, you get something real.

More soon.