Karen Shakhnazarov

Director

July 8, 1952 (73 years)

Krasnodar, Krasnodarskiy kray, RSFSR, USSR [now Russia]

Biography

Karen Georgievich Shakhnazarov (Russian: Каре́н Гео́ргиевич Шахназа́ров; born 8 July 1952; Krasnodar) is a Soviet and Russian filmmaker, producer and screenwriter. He became the director general of Mosfilm in 1998. Shakhnazarov is the son of a Georgy Shakhnazarov, a politician of Armenian descent, and a Russian housewife, Anna Grigorievna Shakhnazarova. His 1987 film Courier was entered into the 15th Moscow International Film Festival, where it won a Special Prize. In 2002 he was a member of th…

Filmography

7.6

Fuse

Fitil is a popular Soviet/Russian television satirical/comedy short film series which ran for about 500 episodes. Some of the episodes were aimed at children, and were called Фитилёк, Fitilyok, Little Fuse. Each issue contained from the few short segments: documentary, fictional and animated ones. Directed by various artists, including Leonid Gaidai who presented his famous trio of Nikulin, Vitsin and Morgunov into the cast. It was called in USSR as "the anecdotes from the Soviet government".

4.0

Anna Karenina

In late-19th-century Russian high society, St. Petersburg aristocrat Anna Karenina enters into a life-changing affair with the dashing Count Alexei Vronsky. An eight part adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" from Vronsky's point of view.

5.7

White Tiger

WWII, 1945. After barely surviving a battle with a mysterious, ghostly-white German Tiger tank, Red Army Sergeant Ivan Naydenov becomes obsessed with its destruction.

7.4

Courier

Ivan Mirosnikov, a cheeky young man in the Gorbachev era, is trying to figure out what to do with his life (he's not in college, and the 2-year mandatory military service is looming large ahead of him). Meanwhile, he lives with his divorced mother, and works as a courier at a Russian newspaper. Through his job, he meets patronizing Professor Kuznetzov and his rebellious daughter Katya. To annoy the professor, Ivan claims to have an affair with Katya. To his surprise, Katya backs his story up.

6.7

Zerograd

Going on a business trip, the hero of the film suddenly finds himself in a fantastic city. It is very similar to our world, only the hidden absurdity of everyday life here has become apparent.

5.6

Anna Karenina. Vronsky's Story

There is no single truth in love. Each treads their own path. Which should take precedence – passion or duty? How do we choose? And who gets to judge? These are the eternal questions, remorselessly thrust upon us by life. Anna Karenina made her choice, leaving her son Sergei to grow up struggling to understand why his mother took such a tragic and terrible path, and Count Vronsky haunted by the memory of the woman for whose death he still blames himself 30 years later. In 1904, in the aftermath of one of the battles of the Russo-Japanese war, Sergei Karenin and Alexei Vronsky find themselves thrown together in a remote Manchurian village, where fate offers them a chance to return to the events long past and, finally, to find the answers both have long been seeking.

4.6

The Rider Named Death

In pre-Soviet Russia, Boris Savinkov leads a terrorist faction of Socialist-Revolutionary Party members responsible for the deaths of governors and ministers.

5.7

Kind Men

Gordei Kabachkov, a professional con man, decided to pursue a career in science and was very successful. Having settled in a certain Institute of Ancient Culture, he easily wraps his finger around the numerous "kind men" - members of the academic council - and defends his thesis. Using his "talents" and the kindness of the staff of the Institute of Ancient Culture, Kabachkov makes a rapid take-off on the career ladder...

4.7

Ward No. 6

Simultaneously nihilistic and heartening, Ward No. 6 is based on a story by Chekov, in which a psychiatric doctor becomes a patient in his own asylum. Updated to contemporary Russia, the film is a cocktail of anxieties and riddles, showcasing how easy it is to become what we fear most.

5.7

American Daughter

A lonely Russian man is trying to see his daughter, who lives with her mother far away in the USA.

5.8

In the Moscow Slums

Moscow, 1902. The famous director Konstantin Stanislavsky, in search of inspiration for staging a new play, decides to get acquainted with the life of the city "bottom". He turns to Vladimir Gilyarovsky, a recognized expert on the Moscow slums, for help.

6.3

Winter Evening in Gagry

A young romantic loves step dance but there is only one person who knows this forgotten art. Beglov was a step dance super star back in 50s but as step became unpopular he lost everything. He hates even this word - 'chechotka' (step dance). But somehow the young man convinces him to become his coach and manager.

6.8

We're from Jazz

A music student is expelled from school because he loves jazz, a kind of music that represents the US capitalism. He hires two street musicians to form a dixie band, and goes from one city to another trying to gain fame.

5.7

Assassin of the Tsar

A new doctor from Moscow arrives at a provincial mental institution. His interest is the peculiarities of the psyche of a patient who believes that he is Yakov Yurovsky, the man who assassinated the last Russian tsar. In the course of their conversations it transpires that the patient is a kind of philosopher, not without a gift for suggestion. In a while the doctor himself falls under his patient’s influence: he tends to relive that fatal night of June 16-17, 1918 when, without any investigation or trial, Tsar Nicholas II, who had recently abdicated, was murdered, together with his wife, daughters and incurably ill heir. Soon the doctor realizes that the tragedy of the last Russian tsar is in part his own tragedy, too...

5.0

Day of the Full Moon

Day of the Full Moon, a series of vignettes from Russia past and present, summons the spirit of Ophuls’ La Ronde, Altman’s Nashville and Short Cuts, and the time-shifting strategies of Resnais (Mon Oncle d’Amérique) to tell provocative, connected stories illustrating the waltz of years and whim of memory. In 1948, a young man, a boy, and a waiter are captivated during the full moon by a mysterious woman in a lilac dress. The effects of this event ripple across the years, washing over more than 80 characters, including a disc jockey, a fairy princess, a gangster, Alexander Pushkin, and a nostalgic dog. But which of these are dreams, and which reality? Director Shakhnazarov continues his career-long focus on the intersection of past and present with this mysterious, exhilarating mosaic of humankind, which in the end both seduces and satisfies.

5.6

Vanished Empire

This story take place in Moscow during the 1970s and unfolds around the love triangle between two young men and a girl who study at the same university. They argue, make up, and face their first disappointments and victories. While busy with personal lives and loves, they miss foreseeing that the country in which they were born and live will soon disappear from the map.

N/A

Love in the USSR

5.1

Dreams

Russian countess in 1893 has strange dreams about herself living a life as a dishwasher in 1993' Moscow after dissolution of the USSR.

5.1

Poisons or the World History of Poisoning

A story of an actor named Oleg whose wife has been seduced by his neighbor. As he is thoroughly convinced of her infidelity, he would like to poison her. An old man named Prokhorov helps him to get rid of his wife by lecturing about famous deaths caused by poisoning. It is from Prokhorov we learn that many famous and not so famous like Cesare Borgia and Caligula were killed as they were poisoned.

7.0

Wider Step Maestro!

One day in the life of doctor.