The Bodyguard

Ali Irgashaliyevich Khamraev (Russian: Али Иргашалиевич (Эргашевич) Хамраев; born Tashkent, 19 May 1937) is an Uzbek director who is best known in the former Soviet Union for his work in the 1970s.

Ali Khamrayev is a film director from the same generation with Andrey Tarkovsky, Sergey Paradzhanov, Otar Ioseliani. They all are prominent artists of the Soviet cinema of the so-called warming period [of the 1960s, known for liberal governmental policies that resulted in a spurt in the arts]. This generation manifested the values of the intellectual auteur cinema. Today, Ali Khamrayev continues to work in the area of grand concepts and universal values.

Ali Khamrayev was born May 19th of 1937. In 1961, he graduated from VGIK, the workshop of Gregory Roshal. In 1969, he was honored for outstanding achievements in the arts by the government of Uzbekistan. Ali Khamrayev’s film The Seventh Bullet was seen by 22.5 million viewers – an unheard of audience for Central Asian movies. He received many awards at various international film festivals. He directed his films in Uzbekistan, Tadzhikistan, Russia and Afghanistan. Each of his motion pictures became a brilliant event in the Soviet cinema. Since the end of the 1980s, he has lived and worked in Moscow. —kinokultura.com