Valery Todorovsky

Directing

Valery Todorovsky

Born 1962-05-08 · Odessa, USSR (Ukraine)

Valery Petrovich Todorovsky (Russian: Вале́рий Петро́вич Тодоро́вский; Ukranian: Валерій Петрович Тодоровський; born 9 May 1962; Odessa) is a Russian film director, screenwriter, producer whose best known film is "Hipsters" (2008). He is the son of filmmaker Pyotr Todorovsky (1925-2013) and the father of the filmmaker Pyotr Todorovsky Jr. (1986). Of his earlier films, The Hearse (Katafalk) won the Grand Prix at Mannheim (1990) and Love (Lyubov) received Ecumenical Prize at Cannes (1992), and won awards at Sozvezdie, Chicago, Geneva and Montpellier Film Festivals. Todorovsky made a name for himself with the crime melodrama set in Moscow, The Country of Deaf (Strana Glukhikh), scripted by actress-director-scriptwriter Renata Litvinova based on her own novella To Have and to Belong. The film was entered into the 48th Berlin International Film Festival in 1998. In 1999 he was a member of the jury at the 21st Moscow International Film Festival. His 2008 musical film Hipsters won the Golden Eagle Award and Nika Award for Best Film. Valery Todorovsky also co-produced the Russian gangster TV series Brigada (2002) (which eventually received a cult popularity) and the 2005 TV adaptation of the Master and Margarita for Telekanal Rossiya. In 2013, Russian TV main channel "Channel 1" showed a serial The Thaw. It was Valeriy's debut on TV as a director. The ratings proved the serial was received with a great success. The serial is a melodrama about life in the Soviet Union during the early years of Nikita Khrushchev's era. In 2022, The Russian streaming service More.tv showed the drama In two, directed by Todorovsky, and starring Alexander Petrov, Danila Kozlovsky and Irina Starshenbaum.

Acting credits

A Strange Woman poster
4.2

Irina Kupchenko stars in this psychological drama by the renowned director/writer team of Yuli Raizman and Yevgeny Gabrilovich. In the story, she is the entirely respectable wife of a career diplomat, with a teenaged son. Suddenly one day, she decides to leave her marriage and go live with her lover.

A Strange Woman

1978

PG 16... poster
5.8

Kir, Leya, Dasha and Max are student. Almost every experience is for a first time to them - first love, first disappointment, first betrayal...

PG 16...

2010

Yankovsky poster
10.0

This film is not about Oleg Yankovsky in the usual sense: not a biography of a great actor, not a review of roles. And not the sharp facts from his personal life. Although it's all in the film: a dramatic fate, unknown pages of biography. Like any great actor, he possessed a secret - he did not tell both in the movies and in life. But his main gift was not even acting. Yankovsky was talented at making people fall in love with him. I wanted to look at him again and again: that's why they loved him and still love him.

Yankovsky

2015

VGIK100. Love Letter poster
10.0

A documentary film about the oldest film school in the world, created to mark the centenary of VGIK.

VGIK100. Love Letter

2019

Into_nation of Big Odesa poster
6.5

In the world, there is a city-port Odesa, which was specially created as a refuge for people of different nationalities and religions. Humor is a special language that helps people from Odesa to communicate and get along with each other. Legends are spreading about Odesa's humor and accent. But - a paradox - people are constantly leaving it. It is loved, but it is left as a child leaves his mother. On the example of this city and its inhabitants, we wanted to understand - why people flee from their cities. We tried to find the answer taking pictures of Odesa citizens in Germany, Israel, Ukraine, Russia, Austria, France and other places. Michael Zhvanetskij, Roman Kartsev, Leonid Barats and Rostislav Khait Victor Loshak,  Oksana Fandera, Valerij Todotovskij, Mikhail and Anatoly Kontush and many others are telling their stories and giving their opinions on what is the phenomenon of the city by the Black Sea.

Into_nation of Big Odesa

2018

Behind the camera

A Man of a Retinue poster
8.0

According to the story of the same name by Vladimir Makanin. Mitya Rodiontsev, a young employee of the research institute, for some time now became one of those who were in the close circle of the secretary of the director Aglaya Andreyevna and felt well protected from the vicissitudes of fate. Having become a “retinue”, Mitya was no longer engaged in science, but was busy for those who needed him, openly respected him and saw him as a future leader. But once Rodiontsev was not invited to the director’s office for a weekly tea party...

A Man of a Retinue

1987

Tutor poster
4.8

The 17-year-old Savva is getting ready to enrol at university. His parents go on vacation, conferring the responsibility for preparing the entrance exams onto the son. Savva finds a foreign literature teacher on the Internet site “Your Tutor”.

Tutor

2018

PickUp: With no Rules poster
4.3

Three young guys are spending their days and nights trying to pick up as many girls as possible.

PickUp: With no Rules

2009

Scourge of God poster
4.8

After leaving prison, 40 years old Lyashenko robbed a man at the station and, along with the money, stole a passport. Realizing that he had robbed his childhood friend, Lyashenko decided to return the stolen goods. A night conversation between the tramp Leonid Lyashenko and the successful official.

Scourge of God

1989

My Step Brother Frankenstein poster
6.1

One day Pavel, a young man wounded in the war, suddenly shows up at the home of a Moscow scientist name Krymov and claims to be his illegitimate son. Krymov denies this, but out of compassion he helps arrange a necessary operation for Pavel. Then certain things begin happening which suggest to Krymov that he may have a psychologically unstable fellow on his hands.

My Step Brother Frankenstein

2004

Piranha Hunt poster
5.8

Agent of special department "Piranha" Kirill Mazur and his colleague Olga go to the far north with the assignment to liquidate an underwater secret weapon lab in the guise of a mutual vacation. All of a sudden, they find themselves in the world where civilization laws are forgotten, and this deadly weapons are kept by gangsters who are controlled by a new "master of taiga" Prohor, whose leisure time is spent hunting at humans. Mazur didn't know that he would have to trade his familiar gun for a hand-made bone knife, and save his companion and himself instead of saving the world. For them, this safari in northern forests would be no less dangerous as for the live targets.

Piranha Hunt

2006

The Geographer Drank His Globe Away poster
6.7

Victor Sluzhkin signs on as a teacher of geography in a secondary school in his native Perm (in the Urals) and gets lost in a haze of hard vodka, desperate love for a nymphet-like student and the stress of educating teenagers. Geographer, as the students immediately dub Sluzhkin, attempts to escape from the grueling, dull, stultifying reality of Russia's provincial life in a rafting tour to the Urals. Accompanied by wild, adventure-seeking adolescents, faced with the numerous grim surprises of the nature, Geographer is poised to find himself and his own truth.

The Geographer Drank His Globe Away

2013

The Geographer Drank His Globe Away poster
6.7

Victor Sluzhkin signs on as a teacher of geography in a secondary school in his native Perm (in the Urals) and gets lost in a haze of hard vodka, desperate love for a nymphet-like student and the stress of educating teenagers. Geographer, as the students immediately dub Sluzhkin, attempts to escape from the grueling, dull, stultifying reality of Russia's provincial life in a rafting tour to the Urals. Accompanied by wild, adventure-seeking adolescents, faced with the numerous grim surprises of the nature, Geographer is poised to find himself and his own truth.

The Geographer Drank His Globe Away

2013

Hipsters poster
6.5

In this hit Russian musical, a group of friends flaunts Soviet authority in 1950s Moscow by embracing jazz. When Communist Mels falls for Polly, a free-spirited jazz fan, he risks losing his party membership by associating with her rebellious crew.

Hipsters

2008

Hipsters poster
6.5

In this hit Russian musical, a group of friends flaunts Soviet authority in 1950s Moscow by embracing jazz. When Communist Mels falls for Polly, a free-spirited jazz fan, he risks losing his party membership by associating with her rebellious crew.

Hipsters

2008

Hipsters poster
6.5

In this hit Russian musical, a group of friends flaunts Soviet authority in 1950s Moscow by embracing jazz. When Communist Mels falls for Polly, a free-spirited jazz fan, he risks losing his party membership by associating with her rebellious crew.

Hipsters

2008

The Bolshoi poster
6.1

Young and extremely talented dancer Yulya Olshanskaya from a small mining town draws a “happy ticket”: she is noticed by a former ballet dancer Pototsky and he promises her a future of great ballerina, worthy of the main stage of the country. However, in order to become a diamond, anyone, even the most outstanding brilliant, needs to be cut, and the way to the legendary stage of The Bolshoi Theatre for Yulya lies through the walls of the ballet school, where the more capricious teacher Galina Mikhailovna Beletskaya takes custody of the rebellious provincial. Turning into a prima will require incredible self-denial, and Yulya herself will have to make sure that the big ballet is not only the whiteness of the packs, the gold of the boxes and the slip of silk ribbons. But no obstacles will stop the one who has the big dream.

The Bolshoi

2016

The Bolshoi poster
6.1

Young and extremely talented dancer Yulya Olshanskaya from a small mining town draws a “happy ticket”: she is noticed by a former ballet dancer Pototsky and he promises her a future of great ballerina, worthy of the main stage of the country. However, in order to become a diamond, anyone, even the most outstanding brilliant, needs to be cut, and the way to the legendary stage of The Bolshoi Theatre for Yulya lies through the walls of the ballet school, where the more capricious teacher Galina Mikhailovna Beletskaya takes custody of the rebellious provincial. Turning into a prima will require incredible self-denial, and Yulya herself will have to make sure that the big ballet is not only the whiteness of the packs, the gold of the boxes and the slip of silk ribbons. But no obstacles will stop the one who has the big dream.

The Bolshoi

2016

PG 16... poster
5.8

Kir, Leya, Dasha and Max are student. Almost every experience is for a first time to them - first love, first disappointment, first betrayal...

PG 16...

2010

The Iron Ivan poster
6.0

He was called the Champion of Champions. The strength and strong-willed character Poddubniy composed legends. And 50 great fighter effortlessly overcame young athletes, and questions of honor and justice did not know compromises. And only love could put Russian Heroes on both blades

The Iron Ivan

2014

Odessa poster
5.6

Odessa, August 1970. A heat wave. The city is full of tourists. Boris, a journalist and foreign affairs specialist, and his eight-year-old son Valeri arrive from Moscow to visit Boris’ in-laws, Grigori Iosifovich and Raisa Irovna Davidov. But on the day of their arrival, Odessa declares a quarantine due to a cholera outbreak, and the city is closed off. Having come for a few days, the son-in-law is plunged into a world changed by serious danger. Family secrets will be disclosed, improbable events happen, and a great forbidden love starts.

Odessa

2019

Odessa poster
5.6

Odessa, August 1970. A heat wave. The city is full of tourists. Boris, a journalist and foreign affairs specialist, and his eight-year-old son Valeri arrive from Moscow to visit Boris’ in-laws, Grigori Iosifovich and Raisa Irovna Davidov. But on the day of their arrival, Odessa declares a quarantine due to a cholera outbreak, and the city is closed off. Having come for a few days, the son-in-law is plunged into a world changed by serious danger. Family secrets will be disclosed, improbable events happen, and a great forbidden love starts.

Odessa

2019

Butterfly Kiss poster
4.8

He is the genius of industrial espionage. She is a Chinese. She has nothing, she does not even have a name. They love each other madly, but they belong to the system. Go away from the system can only be to the madhouse, or to the grave.

Butterfly Kiss

2006

The Last Bottomhole poster
3.9

A drama about a life of ordinary people in a small mining town.

The Last Bottomhole

2006

The Last Bottomhole poster
3.9

A drama about a life of ordinary people in a small mining town.

The Last Bottomhole

2006

The Admirer poster
5.7

Parents of thirteen years old Lena just got divorced. Lena wants to prove that they live nicely even with her mother alone and that she is independent. The girl goes to work at post office utilizing there her resourcefulness and charm. At work everyone talks about a serial killer who keeps the entire region in terror. One night a stranger defends Lena from some hooligans and as Lena thinks, he continues assisting her incognito. The girl is ready to believe and convince others that her protector is that horrible maniac. At first, these relationships with her odd admirer seem as a gamble for Lena, but then she gets convinced that this game became deadly dangerous...

The Admirer

1999

Kandahar poster
6.2

A docudrama about the escape of Russian pilots after being taken hostage by the Taliban in 1996.

Kandahar

2010

Katya Ismailova poster
4.5

A wife finds her life transformed after a torrid affair in this story of murder. Katia is a rather dull young woman who types manuscripts for Irina, her husband’s mother and successful writer of romance novels. Katia’s husband is a real momma’s boy. They go to Irina’s summer house to work. There Katia encounters the intense and sexy Serguei who creates passionate longings with in her. Overcome she and Serguei engage in vigorous love-making upon a windowsill where Irina sees them. Irina has a weak heart. Quiet Katia, having rediscovered the joys of sex, changes and becomes more assertive and flighty. Serguei quickly loses interest in her. Strange and deadly things begin happening at the summer house which calls the attention of a judge who is extremely familiar with Irina’s writing.

Katya Ismailova

1994

S.S.D. poster
5.0

On TV a new reality show, "Pionerlager", has started. Following the results of a casting, five young men and five girls, led by young TV presenter Alice Ten, go to the thrown pioneer camp. The rules state that every week someone would be eliminated from the show. The last one remaining will win the main prize: one million roubles. But suddenly game rules change: the invisible observer declares that it is life, not money, that will be the award for the winner. The maniac hiding behind the mask of a horse, begins a hunt for the participants. Children's horror stories which he once listened to in pioneer camp, revive and become a plot of its own murders.

S.S.D.

2008