Born in 1960 in the village of Berezan in Kiev province, Petr Lutsik spent his early life in Samarkand and Tashkent (Uzbekistan). He graduated from MISIS (Moscow Institute of Steel technologies) in 1982, and then from the scriptwriters' department of VGIK (workshop of V. Tuliakova and O. Agishev) in 1990. In 1984-1985 he worked as an assistant director and chief administrator at Uzbekfilm Studios. He acted in the film Golden Head of the Avenger (1988).
In 1986-1994, in collaboration with Aleksei Samoriadov, he wrote scripts for eight films, as well as for a TV mini-series, State Border. In 1989 Lutsik directed his first short film, On the Eve. Borderland is the director's full-length feature debut. The film won the FIPRESCI Award "for its ironic recycling of classic Soviet cinema in addressing a modern crisis."
Three Russian peasants travel from their remote province to Moscow in order to find out who has purchased the land on which their people have lived and worked since time immemorial.