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Vadim Yusupovich Abdrashitov is a film director. He is one of Russian cinema's most independent directors and is internationally renown with awards from the Berlin and Venice Film Festivals.
Abdrashitov was born in Ukraine in a Tatar family, and moved all over the Soviet Union with his father's military assignments. He was so impressed with the space flight of the first Russian cosmonaut that he left his parents and moved to Moscow to study nuclear physics at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.
Around that time, he developed an interest in amateur filmmaking, and he transferred to the Mendeleev Institute of Technology because it was equipped with a film studio for students. His cultural and artistic interests developed during the "Thaw," which was a time when repression and censorship were reversed in the Soviet Union. After graduation as an engineer, he worked as a manager at the Moscow Electric-Vacuum Industry, which was making color TV tubes.
From 1970-1974 Abdrashitov studied film directing at the Moscow State Institute of Cinematography. His directorial debut was Ostanovite Potapova!, a satirical comedy based on the screenplay by Grigori Gorin. In 1975 Abdrashitov met with the unknown writer Aleksandr Mindadze. That was the beginning of a collaboration that lasted for the next 12 films, which they made together in 30 years. Their films were awarded at many international film festivals as well as at the Soviet and Russian film forums.
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