Hito Steyerl (born 1966, Munich, Germany) is a filmmaker, visual artist, writer, and innovator of the essay documentary. Her prolific filmmaking and writing occupies a highly discursive position between the fields of art, philosophy, and politics, constituting a deep exploration of late capitalism’s social, cultural, and financial imaginaries. Her films and lectures have increasingly addressed the presentational context of art, while her writing has circulated widely through publication in both academic and art journals, often online. She studied Documentary Film Directing at the Japan Institute of the Moving Image and at the HFF – University of Television and Film in Munich. She subsequently studied Philosophy at the Academy of the Arts in Vienna, where she received her doctorate. She is Professor for Experimental Film and Video at the UdK – University of the Arts, Berlin, where she founded the Research Center for Proxy Politics together with Vera Tollmann and Boaz Levin.