Nikita MIKHALKOV

Nikita Mikhalkov was born in Moscow in 1945. His family was one of writers and artists. He started acting when he was 14 years old, and played in many films including I Step Through Moscow by G. Daniela (1963) and A Nest of Gentry by his brother A. Mikhalkov-Konchalovski (1969). During that period, he studied cinema at the VGIK in Mikhaïl Romm's directing class. One of his first films as director, Slave of Love (1975) is a tribute to silent movies and An Unfinished Piece for a Player Piano adapted from Chekhov, won first prize at the San Sebastian Festival, thus establishing Mikhalkov's international fame. It was amplified by his following successes: Five Evenings (1978), A Few Days in the Life of I.I. Oblomov (1979) after Goncharov's novel, Kinfolk (1981) and Without Witness (1983). In 1987, he directed Dark Eyes in Italy with Marcello Mastroianni taking the main role, and in 1991 went to Mongolia to shoot Urga (Close to Eden), Golden Lion at the Venice Festival. Anna (1992-1994) was a portrait of his daughter and Burnt by the Sun won Grand Prize at the Festival de Cannes in 1994 and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1995.
After various roles in many of his own films, he played the central character of Colonel Kotov in that film and made a brief appearance as Tsar Alexander III, in the Barber of Siberia, shown at the opening night of the Festival de Cannes in 1999.