Awards :
Artiste du peuple de l’Union Soviétique, 1986
Décoré de l’ordre du mérite de la Patrie, 1996
Lauréat du « Bélier d’or »,1995
Prix Nika pour sa contribution au cinéma, 2005
Born: 4 October 1925 in Tbilisi, Georgian SSR, Soviet Union, now Georgia
Graduating from VGIK in 1952, Khutsiyev was among the first wave of filmmakers to emerge during the Soviet thaw. He remains one of Russia's greatest living directors. After the critical and popular success of Spring on Zarechnaya Street, his next major film-- eventually titled I am Twenty--underwent years of state-ordered rewrites, re-edits, and reshoots. Complicating the thaw's liberal reputation, Khrushchev himself ordered some of the changes. While not as frank or experimental as originally intended, the completed film is still a deeply sympathetic contemporary drama. It won a Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival. He made a number of notable films in the sixties and seventies, particularly July Rain, and also worked for Soviet television. He returned to feature filmmaking in 1992 with Infinity, which won several awards at the Berlin Film Festival, and he's currently working on a film based on the lives of Tolstoy and Chekhov.
Source : www.seagullfilms.com