Taika Waititi — director with roots in the Russian Empire
Taika Waititi was born Taika David Cohen on 16 August 1975; Wikipedia gives his birthplace as Wellington, while other sources place it in the Raukokore area on the East Coast of New Zealand's North Island, where he spent part of his childhood. His father, also Taika Waititi, an artist and farmer, is Māori of the Te Whānau-ā-Apanui iwi. His mother, Robin Cohen, a schoolteacher, is of Ashkenazi Jewish, Irish, Scottish and English descent. His connection to the Russian Empire runs through her.
Robin Cohen's paternal grandfather was a Russian Jew whose family came from Novozybkov, then a town in the Chernigov Governorate of the Russian Empire and now in Russia's Bryansk region. Waititi has said that his mother's family were Russian Jewish, Irish and of other European origins, and, identifying as both Māori and Jewish, describes himself as a "Polynesian Jew". His parents separated when he was about five, and he was raised mainly by his mother, between the East Coast and Wellington.
He studied theatre and film at Victoria University of Wellington, where he joined a comedy troupe, and formed the comedy duo the Humourbeasts with Jemaine Clement. In his early career he used his mother's surname, Cohen, for film and writing and his father's, Waititi, for painting and photography. His short film Two Cars, One Night (2003) was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short. His feature Boy (2010), which premiered at Sundance, became the most successful New Zealand comedy of its time, and with Clement he co-wrote, co-directed and starred in the vampire mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows (2014), later the basis of two television series.
He directed Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016) and the Marvel films Thor: Ragnarok (2017) and Thor: Love and Thunder (2022). His satire Jojo Rabbit (2019), adapted from Christine Leunens's novel Caging Skies, a book his mother gave him, received six Academy Award nominations; Waititi, who also played the boy's imaginary Adolf Hitler, won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, becoming the first person of Māori descent to win an Academy Award, along with a BAFTA. He later won a Grammy as producer of its soundtrack.
For television he co-created Reservation Dogs and worked on Our Flag Means Death. He was named New Zealander of the Year in 2017.
Tracing the roots — Novozybkov (Chernigov Governorate)
His father is Māori (Te Whānau-ā-Apanui) of partly French-Canadian descent; his mother, schoolteacher Robin Cohen, is of European descent. His mother's paternal grandfather was a Russian Jew whose family came from Novozybkov, then a town in Chernigov Governorate of the Russian Empire. He has described himself as a "Polynesian Jew".
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Novozybkov (Chernigov Governorate). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.