Georgi Danelia

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Georgi Daneliya

Georgi Danelia (Georgian: გიორგი დანელია Giorgi Danelia, Russian: Георгий Николаевич Данелия, Geo. Giorgi Nikolozis dze Danelia; born Tbilisi, 25 August 1930) is a Russian film director of Georgian descent, who became known throughout the Soviet Union for his sad comedies (as he styles them), bittersweet as the life itself.

Danelia graduated from the Moscow Architecture Institute and worked as an architect.

In 1956 Georgi Daneliya entered the Higher Director’s Courses at the Mosfilm Studio where his teachers were Mikhail Romm, Sergei Yutkevich, Leonid Trauberg, Yuli Raizman, and Mikhail Kalatozov.

His 1964 feature I Step Through Moscow, starring Nikita Mikhalkov, is one of the most characteristic films of the Khrushchev Thaw. Danelia's most popular movies were probably Mimino (1977), about a Georgian pilot's adventures in Moscow, and The Autumn Marathon(1980), about a translator vacillating between his wife and mistress. In 1986 he directed a weird sci-fi feature, Kin-dza-dza!. Most of his films featured his then wife Lyubov Sokolova, which has been cited by the Guinness Book of Records as the most prolific film actress ever, and his friend Yevgeny Leonov. Danelia was named a People's Artist of the USSR in 1990.

More recently, he married film director Galina Yurkova, has been involved in animation projects and was given the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Russian Academy of Cinema Arts.

Georgi Daneliya is the author or co-author of scripts to most of his films; he also wrote scripts for films by other directors, among them Gentlemen of Fortune (Джентельмены Удачи) (1972) jointly with Viktoriya Tokareva), Frenchman (Француз) (1988) with Sergei Bodrov and Privet from Charli Trubach (Привет от Чарли Трубача) (1998) with Sergei Dernov.