Nikita Mikhalkov

Born in Moscow on October 21, 1945, Nikita Sergeyevich Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky comes from a family of renowned artists. His father, Sergei Mikhalkov, wrote the anthem of the Soviet Union and was a successful writer of children’s books. His mother, Natalia Konchalovskaya, wrote poetry and was the daughter of an avant-garde painter. His older brother, Andrei Konchalovsky , would become a prestigious filmmaker.

Mikhalkov had always wanted to be an actor, so as a child he entered the Moscow Art Theater, and later the Schukin school of the Vakhtangov Theater. He made his film debut in Vasili Ordynsky’s drama Tuchi nad Borskom , although he was given a larger role by his brother Andrei in Home of the Brave and Uncle Vanya (1972).

His career was on the rise, and he had a chance to become a star on the big screen when he decided to study directing, at the state film school, as a student of Andrei Tarkovsky , who had already mentored his brother. While studying, he directed a couple of shorts, and later he made his feature film directorial debut with Friend Among My Enemies , an unusual red western, as the Soviet replicas of Hollywood’s ‘cowboy’ films were known.

He gained international success with the brilliant Love Slave , about a director trying to wrap up a shoot as the Russian Revolution begins. With An unfinished piece for piano she won the Golden Shell in San Sebastián. Shortly after starring in her brother’s Siberiada , she finished the romantic Five Afternoons , about a couple separated during World War II.

After Relatives and Without Witnesses , at the end of the 80s Mikhalkov established himself internationally, especially with Black Eyes , based on stories by Anton Chekhov , with a script by Suso Cecchi d’Amico , the legendary collaborator of Luchino Visconti . The great Marcello Mastroianni –awarded at Cannes and nominated for an Oscar– played a man who falls in love for a while at a spa.

He won the Golden Lion in Venice and an Oscar nomination for best foreign film with Urga , about the life of a family of Mongolian herdsmen on the Russian-Chinese border. Possibly his most rounded and well-known film is Burned by the Sun , where he himself played a colonel whose young wife meets a man from his past, at the time of Stalin’s fearsome purges.

In the late 1990s, it was rumored that Mikhalkov would run for president of the government brandishing his monarchical ideology, and precisely for this reason he was widely criticized for his appearance as Tsar Alexander III in his own film The Barber of Siberia .

Mikhalkov spent a decade away from filmmaking. In addition to working as a film teacher, he became the representative of the Union of Russian Filmmakers. He returned to his trade in 2007 with 12 , a curious adaptation to modern Russia of the plot of 12 Angry Men .

The biggest hit of Mikhalkov’s career has been Burnt by the Sun 2 , which brought back the characters from the original film within the framework of a luxuriously reconstructed World War II. But critics dismissed him as lacking in ideas, and attacked his unsound script. In addition, the public did not respond.

Divorced from the renowned Russian actress Anastasia Vertinskaya, with whom he had a son, he joined Tatyana, a former model with whom he has fathered three other offspring.