Aleksei German

Director

“We had introduced new technical things that other filmmakers arrived at years later. Of course, all these things get older. Of course, it’s a tragedy. The cinema is a constantly developing kind of art form. It gets old very quickly.”

Biography

Aleksei Yuryevich German (in Russian: Алексей Юрьевич Герман) (born on June 20, 1938) is a Soviet and Russian filmmaker, most active as a director and screenwriter. His last name is pronounced with a hard “g” and in English is frequently spelled Guerman or Gherman to avoid confusion.

Almost all of German’s films have been set during the Stalin era and have shown the time period in a critical light. His films, shot mostly in black and white or very muted color, have a distinctive “murky” look and are often described as looking “aged.”

His son, a film director, is also named Aleksei German.

German was born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg, Russia) in 1938; his father was the writer Yuri German. He studied under Grigori Kozintsev until 1960, and then moved on to working in theatre before joining the Lenfilm studio as an assistant director. He made his directing debut with Sedmoy Sputnik, co-directed with Grigory Aronov in 1967. Over the course of his career, many of… read more