Sergei Loznitsa was born on September 5th, 1964 in Baranovitchi, in Belarus, which at that time was part of the Soviet Union. His family later moved to Kiev, Ukraine, where Loznitsa attended high school and later graduated with a degree in engineering and mathematics from the Kiev Polytechnic Institute.

It was while employed as a scientist at the Institute of Cybernetics, from 1987 to 1991, that Loznitsa developed an interest in cinema and in 1991 he applied to the Russian State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) in Moscow. He passed a rigorous selection process and in 1997 Loznitsa graduated with a major in film production and direction.

His first documentaries, including Today We Are Going to Build a House (1996) and Life, Autumn (1998), won awards at film festivals in Leipzig, Tel Aviv, St. Petersburg, and Vila do Conde, Portugal. In 2000, he began producing documentaries at the Documentary Films Studio in St. Petersburg, including The Train Stop (2000), The Settlement (2001), Portrait (2002), Landscape (2003), and Factory (2004).

Loznitsa's most recent documentary films, BLOCKADE (2005) and REVUE (2008), are compilation historical documentaries that utilize archival footage from Soviet archives, much of it made available to filmmakers for the first time.

BLOCKADE is comprised entirely of silent footage of the Siege of Leningrad during WWII, to which Loznitsa has added an evocative soundtrack of natural sound effects, bringing the footage vividly to life. With BLOCKADE, writes Denise Youngblood in The Russian Review, "Loznitsa has taken a different and imaginative approach to the compilation documentary," calling it "One of the most important Russian movies of the last decade."

In a similar manner, REVUE is made up entirely of excerpts from newsreels, propaganda films, TV shows and feature films that present an evocative portrait of Soviet life during the 1950s and 1960s.