In this essay, I analyse the autobiographies of three female Russian editors in order

to explore the issue of editors’ invisibility in the Russian filmmaking community and among

average cinemagoers by tracking editors’ own reasoning for this matter. Here, the invisibility

is understood as average audiences’ failure to recognise the creative input and agency of film

editors, fueled by the lack of attention from festivals and professional film critics. In addition,

this essay attempts to assess the relations within the professional community of editors and

filmmakers at large by commenting on any potential linkages of the (self) identification of the

female gender to the hierarchies within the community. My guiding question is whether there

are any similarities or analogies between the hierarchisation processes and practices within

the narrow professional community and the hierarchised relations among all the Russian

filmmakers or within the today’s Russian gender ecology.

Keywords: Anna Mass; Dasha Danilova; Julia Batalova; Andrei Zviagintsev; Anna Melikian;

Vasilii Sigarev; Boris Khlebnikov; Avdot’ia Smirnova; editor; female editor; rezhisser

montazha; editor’s agency; gender relations; gendered hyper(in)visibility.