Aleksandr Sokurov

Aleksandr Sokurov was born in 1951 in the Soviet Union. He graduated from the Department of History at Nizhny Novgorod University in 1974 and began working at the VGIK (All-Union State Institute of Cinematography) studios the following year. For several years, his films were censored by the Soviet authorities, which only allowed them to be shown from the time of perestroika, in the mid-1980s. His first film, Odinokiy golos cheloveka, made in 1979, was only released in 1987, winning the Bronze Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival. In the following years, he established himself as one of the great contemporary filmmakers, the author of an extraordinary body of work that moves incessantly in many directions (he states that cinema is in constant transformation), as if it were an unpredictable work in progress, oscillating between free invention, classicism, and experimentation. Russian Ark (2002), premiered in the Official Competition at the Cannes Film Festival, is one of his most acclaimed films. The following year, Father and Son (a diptych with Mother and Son (1997)) was also premiered in the Official Competition at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the FIPRESCI Prize. In 2011, Faust won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Fairytale (2022) was selected for the Official Competition at both the Locarno Film Festival and LEFFEST – Lisbon Film Festival. His most recent work, Director’s Diary (2025), premiered at the Venice Film Festival and will be screened at this edition of LEFFEST.