Eliza Petkova was born on 26.07.1983 in Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria. After completing an MA in Philosophy and Modern Japanese at the Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, she worked as a freelance filmmaker in Berlin, where she first chose to focus on documentary films. In 2011, she joins the Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie (DFFB) to study directing. She has made a variety of films, which have been shown at various festivals. In 2015, her short "Abwesend" (“Absent”) was nominated at the Festival de Cannes for the Cinéfondation. "Zhaleika" is her first feature film.