Ilya Khrzhanovsky

Ilya Khrzhanovsky was born in 1975 in Moscow. He is a film director, screenwriter, producer, contemporary art worker, member of the European Academy of Motion Picture Arts, and graduated from the All-Russian State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) in 1998 (workshop of Marlen Khutsiev).

In 2004, Khrzhanovsky’s debut film “4” was released. The film received multiple awards, including: Golden Cactus for Uncompromising Art and Golden Tiger for Best Film at the Rotterdam Film Festival, awards for Best Director at the Buenos Aires and Athens Film Festivals, Grand Prix at the Seattle Film Festivals and Transylvania, a special jury prize of the Kinotavr festival and others. The film “4” was nominated for the “Discovery of the Year” award of the European Film Academy.

DAU is Khrzhanovsky’s second project, on which he has been working since 2006. It is a multi-genre project at the intersection of cinema, art and anthropology. The project premiered in Paris at the Théâtre Châtelet and Théâtre de la Ville in early 2019, while simultaneously an exhibition-installation dedicated to the DAU project was opened at the Centre Pompidou Museum of Contemporary Art.

Two films of the project, “DAU. Natasha and  “DAU. Degeneration”, were included in the official programme of the Berlinale 2020. The film “DAU. Degeneration” topped the overall rating of the international community of film critics at the Berlinale, and cameraman Jürgen Yurges received the Silver Bear for “Outstanding Achievements in the Field of Cinematography”, for the film “DAU. Natasha.”

Since 2019, Ilya Khrzhanovsky has been the artistic director of the Babi Yar Holocaust Memorial Centre.