Ivan Okhlobystin

Ivan Ivanovich Okhlobystin (; born 22 July 1966) is a Russian actor, director, screenwriter, and former Orthodox priest. He is currently defrocked by the ministry of the Russian Orthodox Church and barred from the priesthood. He is the creative director of the company Baon. Early life Ivan Ivanovich Okhlobystin was born on 22 July 1966 in the recreation center "Polenovo" (Zaoksky District of the Tula Oblast), where his father, Ivan Ivanovich Okhlobystin, was a military doctor, and a participant in World War II. He was then 62 years old, and worked as the head physician at Polenovo. His mother, Albina Ivanovna Stavitskaya, (Okhlobystina by her first marriage) (maiden name Belyaeva), was an engineer-economist. She was then a 19-year-old student. His mother remarried to Anatoly Stavitsky, and Ivan had a brother Stanislav Stavitsky. For some time the family lived in a village near Maloyaroslavets in the Kaluga Oblast, afterwards they all moved to Moscow. After graduation, he entered the directing faculty at VGIK. Ivan studied on the same course with many future luminaries of Russian cinema: Tigran Keosayan, Bakhtiyar Khudoynazarov, Fyodor Bondarchuk, Aleksandr Bashirov, Rashid Nugmanov and others. On the parallel course (at the screenwriting faculty) Renata Litvinova, Roman Kachanov and others were studying at that time. Subsequently, Ivan continued the friendship and cooperation which began at the institute with many of them.