Russian producer Sergei Selyanov: biography and best films

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Sergey Selyanov has chosen several professional roles for himself: he writes scripts, directs films and produces them. Of course, he achieved high results in all these fields, otherwise he would not have received more than a dozen film awards and would not have been honored, according to the Expert publication, to be called the only Russian producer whose name has become a brand in the field of feature film production.

Sergey Selyanov has been running the well-known STV film company in the northern capital for many years, for which he was awarded the Golden Aries award. The films "Brother", "Brother-2", "Cargo 200", "Mongol", "Cuckoo" produced by him became cult for the Russian audience, their popularity was simply stunning. Sergey Selyanov collaborated with pleasure with such well-known directors as Alexei Balabanov, Philip Yankovsky, Alexander Rogozhkin, Sergey Bodrov Jr. What is known about this talented person?

Facts frombiographies

Sergey Selyanov is a native of the small town of Olonets, which is located in Karelia. He was born on August 21, 1955 in the family of a fighter pilot. As a child, the boy dreamed of following in his father's footsteps and flying through the sky.

However, after a few years, his priorities in life changed: young Selyanov Sergei Mikhailovich announced that he wanted to become a writer, and after a while, a career as a cinematographer began to attract him. The family of the future director and producer very often moved from place to place, but at the age of 13 he already knew where exactly he would go to study after school.

Student years

Having received a matriculation certificate, a young man submits documents to the Tula Polytechnic University and enters this university. Here Selyanov Sergey Mikhailovich becomes the head of an amateur film studio. Great art attracted him like a magnet, and after a while the young man became a student at the screenwriting department of VGIK. He was assigned to the workshop of the famous film director Nikolai Figurovsky. In the late 80s of the last century, Selyanov graduated from the Higher Courses for Scriptwriters, already a graduate of Bykov's workshop.

First movie

Trial for the novice director was the work on the film "Angel's Day", which he directed in a duet with Nikolai Makarov in 1989.

This was a comedy drama that Selyanov positioned as an independent film, as he spent his own savings on filming. In addition, the plot of the picture wasdissonant in relation to the general political course of the Land of the Soviets, so the cinema received the status of "underground". In general, Sergei Selyanov, whose films are distinguished by metaphorical, allegorical content with elements of the grotesque, emphasizes that a creative person must be able not only to invent and create a movie, but also to properly organize the filming process.

Director and founder of STV

The second film of the "Karelian" director was released on Soviet screens in 1990. It was called "Spirits Day", and the main role here went to the famous singer and performer Yuri Shevchuk, for whom she became a kind of new vector in her career. This creation of the maestro was already legal: the film was shot at Lenfilm.

In 1992, Sergei Mikhailovich created the STV film company in the "northern Palmyra", the "policy" of which was based on the promotion and "promotion" of exclusively Russian films. At this time, he meets his future colleagues "in the shop" - Alexei Balabanov, Pavel Lungin, Philip Yankovsky, Alexander Rogozhkin, the senior and junior Bodrovs.

Screenwriter

In 1994, Sergei Mikhailovich tries himself as a screenwriter. Together with Alexei Balabanov, they wrote the drama "The Castle", which is based on the unfinished work of Franz Kafka with the same name. A year later, Selyanov directed the film "The Time of Sorrow Has Not Yet Come", which received the Promotional Award in Cottbus.

Producer

Sergey Selyanov is a producer of four dozen feature films anddocumentary genres. He was presented with awards at "prestigious" domestic and foreign film festivals.

Maestro was able to prove to everyone that he is capable of promoting any art-house movie to the market. As already emphasized, the films produced by him have always been a resounding success. Together with Alexander Rogozhkin, they made phenomenal films: “Peculiarities of National Fishing”, “Operation Happy New Year!”, “Checkpoint”.

"Cuckoo" - a film that won the audience award of the festival "New Cinema of Russia", held in Vologda. Sergei Mikhailovich himself received it. What is this movie about? "Cuckoo" is a film-story about how three absolutely diverse cultures can come into contact with each other, the carriers of which are a Russian, a Finn and a woman named Anna. Despite the differences in mentality and difficult life circumstances, the main characters of the film still manage to find a "common language". This tape won the Golden Eagle award.

Selyanov is connected with Alexey Balabanov by his work on the films "Brother", "Brother-2", "Blind Man's Bluff", "Morphine".

With Bodrov Jr., he created the cult films "Sisters" and "The Messenger". Work on the latter, unfortunately, was not completed due to the tragic death of Bodrov's film crew. Sergei Selyanov received the Khanzhonkov medal as the best producer in 1995-1998.

The director is married and has two children: daughter Daria and son Gregory.

There are few quality films made in Russia

Most recently maestrocelebrated its sixtieth birthday. Sergei Mikhailovich believes that today the domestic cinema is far from showing the viewer "good" stories. On average, according to the maestro, only 2-3 “good” films are released per year, the rest can be attributed to marriage. The film education system that prevailed in the Soviet era emphasized the education of the artist, while the professionalism of directors was secondary. Now, Selyanov argues, this basic value is a thing of the past, and it is necessary to gradually move along the path of reforming the education system so that much more time is devoted to screenwriting. According to Sergei Mikhailovich, the future of Russian cinema is talented screenwriters.