Assiya Issemberdiyeva is a London-based film critic and researcher. A PhD candidate at Queen Mary University of London (School of he Arts), she specialises in representations of Central Asia in Soviet wartime cinema, with interests in art cinema and postcolonial, decolonial and feminist film theory. She is a member of FIPRESCI and the Kazakhstan Film Critics Association, curated Kazakh Film Week in London (2019, 2021), and created/hosted KinoScope on El Arna TV channel (2022–23). Her writing appears in Azattyq (RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service), Qalam Global, the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Apparatus, KinoKultura and The Calvert Journal. Current projects include pieces in development for Senses of Cinema, Central Asian Survey and Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema. She has led film-literacy workshops for Internews and mentors early-career critics. She champions distinctive authorial voices, formal rigour and ethically attentive storytelling, with a particular interest in debut and second features.