Ilya Khrzhanovsky

Ilya Khrzhanovsky was born in 1975 in Moscow

Ilya Khrzhanovsky was born on 11 August 1975 in Moscow. His father, Andrei Khrzhanovsky, is an animation director, and his mother, Maria Neiman, is a philologist, editor and screenwriter. His grandfather was the artist and actor Yuri Khrzhanovsky.

He studied at the Bonn Academy of Fine Arts from 1992 to 1993 and at the All-Russian State Institute of Cinematography, known as VGIK. In 1997 he directed his first stage production, What I Feel, at the Kukart Festival in Peterhof.

From 1998 to 2002 he worked as a director and producer in advertising and created a TV series for the TNT channel. His feature 4 from 2004 won the Tiger Award in Rotterdam. In 2005 he co-founded Phenomen Films, which produced Paper Soldier.

His DAU project, loosely based on the life of physicist Lev Landau, was filmed on a large set in Kharkiv, Ukraine, from 2009 to 2011. It premiered in Paris in 2019, and DAU. Natasha won a Silver Bear at the 2020 Berlinale. From 2020 to 2023 he was artistic director of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center in Kyiv.

In 2025 he co-founded IP Filmworks in France with producer Philippe Bober. In 2026 the main film DAU premiered at the Venice festival, where he won the Silver Lion for Best Director.