At the beginning of his career, Zhora Kryzhovnikov was known as Andrey Pershin. Mostly he was engaged in staging theatrical performances. Today, many people know the Russian director, producer and screenwriter as the creator of the films “New Christmas Trees”, “Curse”, “Kitchen”, two parts of the comedy “Bitter!” and many others. Kryzhovnikov is the owner of a number of prestigious domestic awards.
Biography
Andrey Pershin was born in 1979, February 14, in the closed city of Sarov (Nizhny Novgorod region). He graduated from two institutes - VGIK (Department of Economics and Production, teacher - A. Akopov) and GITIS (directing, course M. Zakharov). He staged performances at the theaters "School of the modern play" ("Idle Molière") and "ApART" ("An old friend is better", "Measure for measure"). He also works as a director of high-rated television programs ("Big Difference", "Olivier Show", "Unreal Story" and others). He acted as a screenwriter in the comedies Life Ahead and Lucky Chance.
Zhora Kryzhovnikov taught acting at the course of Oleg Kudryashov (RATI) and Andrei Panin (VGIK). The director is a fan of American cinema of the 40-50s of the last century, he especially likes the films of J. Houston, A. Hitchcock, J. Ford and R. Walsh.
Shorts
Kryzhovnikov shot his first pictures ("Dragon Abas Blue", "Kazrop" and "Pushkin duel") in 2009. Then he presented the audience with the short film “Happy Buying”, which was awarded the F5, METERS and St. Anna festivals. The plot of the film is taken from a play written by Zhora himself, "My boyfriend is a robot." The eight-minute story tells about a humanoid machine from the near future, which is trying to adapt to the female nature.
In 2012, Zhora Kryzhovnikov shot the short tragicomedy The Curse in the Found Film genre. The film won the prize of the festival "Saint Anna". The arthouse script was turned into a low-budget short within half a day. Thanks to The Curse, the producers of the film Bitter! found a director for this popular comedy. In 2014, the premiere of the New Year's film "Unintentionally" took place. Kryzhovnikov acted as not only the director of the black comedy, but also the screenwriter. In 2014, "Unexpectedly" became the winner at the Kinotavr.
Feature films
Zhora Kryzhovnikov was involved by T. Bekmambetov and S. Svetlakov in work on a humorous adventurepicture of 2013 "Bitter!". Despite a lot of conflicting reviews from critics, the Russian audience liked the film. Kryzhovnikov, in turn, became the winner in the "Discovery of the Year" and "Best Director's Work" nominations of the Golden Eagle and Nika awards.
The following year, Zhora filmed a sequel to the successful comedy Bitter! - 2". Later, the director released the humorous musical "The Best Day!". A. Kazakov and Zh. Kryzhovnikov worked on the script. The plot lines of the comedy are borrowed from the work of A. Ostrovsky "An old friend is better than two new ones." In 2015, Zhora Kryzhovnikov's film became the most visited in the Russian box office, having collected $10 million.
Recently, the director told fans about his new project, which will be the comedy "Call DiCaprio!". This series will air on TNT. A. Petrov, A. Burkovsky, Yu. Aleksandrova, Ya. Koshkina and others are involved in the filming. The end of 2017 was marked by the premiere of the film New Christmas Trees, in which Sergey Svetlakov and Ivan Urgant again played the main characters. In addition, the fifth part of the comedy loved by many introduced the public to new characters. The film was shot by Zhora in collaboration with Timur Bekmambetov.
Private life
The director met his future wife, actress Julia Aleksandrova, at GITIS. Then the young people crossed paths at the ApARTe theater. Zhora Kryzhovnikov staged a performance in which Yulia participated. At the end of the first rehearsal, the guy invited the actress to marry him. In 2010 Zhoraand Julia became the parents of a girl named Vera.
