Valery Todorovsky — Director | Biography, Movies & Career

Biography

Valery Petrovich Todorovsky (Russian: Вале́рий Петро́вич Тодоро́вский; Ukranian: Валерій Петрович Тодоровський; born 9 May 1962; Odessa) is a Russian film director, screenwriter, producer whose best known film is "Hipsters" (2008). He is the son of filmmaker Pyotr Todorovsky (1925-2013) and the father of the filmmaker Pyotr Todorovsky Jr. (1986).

Of his earlier films, The Hearse (Katafalk) won the Grand Prix at Mannheim (1990) and Love (Lyubov) received Ecumenical Prize at Cannes (1992), and won awards at Sozvezdie, Chicago, Geneva and Montpellier Film Festivals. Todorovsky made a name for himself with the crime melodrama set in Moscow, The Country of Deaf (Strana Glukhikh), scripted by actress-director-scriptwriter Renata Litvinova based on her own novella To Have and to Belong. The film was entered into the 48th Berlin International Film Festival in 1998. In 1999 he was a member of the jury at the 21st Moscow International Film Festival. His 2008 musical film Hipsters won the Golden Eagle Award and Nika Award for Best Film.

Valery Todorovsky also co-produced the Russian gangster TV series Brigada (2002) (which eventually received a cult popularity) and the 2005 TV adaptation of the Master and Margarita for Telekanal Rossiya. In 2013, Russian TV main channel "Channel 1" showed a serial The Thaw. It was Valeriy's debut on TV as a director. The ratings proved the serial was received with a great success. The serial is a melodrama about life in the Soviet Union during the early years of Nikita Khrushchev's era. In 2022, The Russian streaming service More.tv showed the drama In two, directed by Todorovsky, and starring Alexander Petrov, Danila Kozlovsky and Irina Starshenbaum.