Mikhail Kalik

Mikhail Kalik was a Soviet and Israeli film director and screenwriter, known for the film Man Follows Sun (1961).

1927 to 2017The film Man Follows SunImprisonment in the Soviet GulagThe film And the Wind Returneth

Born: 29 January 1927, Arkhangelsk
Died: 31 March 2017, Jerusalem
Occupation: film director, screenwriter, director
Education: Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography

Mikhail Kalik was born in 1927 in Arkhangelsk

Mikhail Kalik was born in Arkhangelsk in 1927 to a Jewish family from Kyiv. He grew up in central Moscow and spent the war years as a teenager in evacuation in Central Asia.

In 1949 he entered the Moscow Film School, VGIK. In 1951 he was arrested with other students and accused of Jewish nationalism and of plotting against the state. He was sentenced to 10 years and sent to Lefortovo Prison and Gulag camps, was released in 1954 and was later cleared by the Soviet authorities.

He returned to his studies and graduated in 1958, the year of his first film, Ataman Codr. Man Follows Sun followed in 1961 and Goodbye, Boys in 1964. His 1968 film To Love was re-edited without his knowledge, and he restored its original version only in 1990.

In 1971 he immigrated to Israel, and his films were then banned in the Soviet Union. His Israeli film Three and One (1974) failed, and he made no more feature films in Israel.

In 1991 he was invited to Russia and made the autobiographical film And the Wind Returneth, shown at the Jerusalem Film Festival in 1993. He died in 2017 and is buried in Jerusalem.