Andrey Zvyagintsev

Andrey Petrovich Zvyagintsev (; born 6 February 1964) is a Russian film director and screenwriter. His film The Return (2003) won him a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Following The Return, Zvyagintsev directed The Banishment (2007) and Elena (2011). His film Leviathan (2014) was nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film in 2014 and won the Best Film award at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. His most recent film Loveless won the Jury Prize at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, and was among the nominees for Best International Feature Film at the 90th Academy Awards. He also won the Achievement in Directing award for this film at the 2017 Asia Pacific Screen Awards. Life and career Zvyagintsev was born in Novosibirsk, Siberia. At the age of 20 in 1984, he graduated from the theater school in Novosibirsk as an actor. Since 1986, he has lived in Moscow where he continued his studies at the Russian Institute of Theatre Arts until 1990. From 1992 to 2000, he worked as an actor for film and theater. In 2000, he began to work for the TV station REN TV and directed three episodes of the television series The Black Room. He directed his first feature film The Return (2003), which received several awards, including a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. His second feature film The Banishment (2007) premiered at its year's Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for a Palme d'Or. Elena (2011), again premiered at Cannes, in the Un Certain Regard section, receiving the festival's Jury Prize. The same year it won the Grand Prix at Film Fest Gent.