Kantemir Balagov


Kantemir Arturovich Balagov is a Russian film director, screenwriter and cinematographer. He has directed the films Closeness and Beanpole.

Biography

Kantemir was born in Nalchik, Kabardino-Balkarian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, RSFSR, in the final year of the Soviet Union, in a family unrelated to cinema. His mother is a teacher of chemistry and biology, she works as a head teacher at a local school, while his father is a local entrepreneur.
Since childhood, Kantemir watched a lot of mainstream movies, and at the age of 18 began to create his own small videos. Then, together with friends in Nalchik, he shot an Internet series with episodes of 10 minutes each. He didn't originally plan to pursue a career as a filmmaker, but decided to apply for the cinema workshop, led by Alexander Sokurov at Kabardino-Balkarian State University in Nalchik. Kantemir missed the deadline to enter the university as a freshman, but still wrote to Sokurov, asking to consider his application. He eventually got accepted to the workshop as a third-year student. As a result, he graduated from university on the course of the creative workshop of Alexander Sokurov.
During his studies, he made several fiction and documentary films. Some of Balagov's short films were shown at the 67th Locarno Film Festival. In 2017, he made his debut as a director with the feature film Closeness in the program Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival, where he received the prize FIPRESCI. In 2017, he was awarded the GQ Russia Prize in the category Discovery of the Year.
In 2019, Balagov received the Cannes Best Director Award and FIPRESCI prize for the film Beanpole, which was presented in the program Un Certain Regard. Beanpole was Russia's entry for Best International Feature Film at the 92nd Academy Awards, making the December shortlist.