Sergey Kostin graduated from the Translation Faculty of the Moscow State Teachers Training Institute of Foreign Languages and the Scenario Faculty of VGIK, the All-Union State Institute of Cinema.

Sergey Vasilyevich Kostin is known as the author of four documentary books written in French and published in France, the USA, Spain, Russia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Brazil and Bulgaria. One of the books, namely Bonjour Farewell, was republished in Sélection du Reader’s Digest and became the basis for the feature film L'Affaire Farewell directed by Christian Carion in 2009. The film stars Emir Kusturica, Guillaume Canet, Willem Dafoe and Ingeborga Dapkunaite in the leads.

Sergey Kostin's six novel series about the illegal immigrant scout Paco Arraya was started in 2006. Today the total circulation of these books in Russian makes 160 thousand copies. The first novel, To Paris for Weekend, was published in the USA, Italy, Bulgaria and Serbia as well. Two other books of the series are being translated in Serbia and Bulgaria.

Sergey Kostin has been working on television since 1978. He is the author, film director, host, and producer of over 50 documentaries, including those coproduced with the French TV channels and screened in lots of countries of the world. Sergey Kostin was in charge of the documentary film department on the Russian television channels NTV (1999-2001), TV6 (2001), and TVS (2002-2003). He was the author, host, and producer of the telecast Comet Tail (TVS, 2002-2003), and host of the Fatal Dates (2007-2008). In 2007-2008 Sergey Kostin took the post of the chief producer of Zvezda TV channel. He worked as independent producer, heading the Free Flight production center in 2008-2012. Since July, 2012 Sergey Kostin has been the chief producer of the Zvezda TV channel.