July 9, 1933
Born in Stalingrad Elem Klimov — a film director who was able to shoot everything from a fiery comedy about a pioneer camp to the most difficult war film in the world.
Our souls fly to the impossible... To the impossible!
His father worked as an investigator for the Party Control Committee, and his mother taught physical education. According to one version, when choosing a name for their son, they settled on an acronym for "Engels, Lenin, Marx."
When the Germans approached Stalingrad, the family fled the burning city by boat.
After school, Klimov graduated from the Aviation Institute and worked as a design engineer. By the age of 26, he realized he wanted to make films and enrolled in the directing department at VGIK.
His thesis was the comedy "Welcome, or No Trespassing," which proved a success. However, the admissions committee initially saw it as a mockery of the Soviet regime. The film was released only after Khrushchev himself saw it: he laughed heartily.
"Children, remember: you are the owners of the camp. And what is required of you, my friends?" — Dis-cipline!
The director's signature style is already evident in his first films: frontal portraits, where the hero peers from the screen so deeply into the viewer's soul that goosebumps run down the skin.
He made fewer than 10 films in his entire career. His most famous is "Come and See," a story about the war through the eyes of a teenager. The plot is based on texts and videos with eyewitness accounts.
I'll never forget the eyes of one peasant, his quiet, quiet story of how their entire village was herded into the church, and before it was burned, a Sonderkommando officer said, "Those without children, come out." And he couldn't resist, he went out, leaving his wife and small children inside. I almost died psychologically in this picture.
During perestroika, he headed the Union of Cinematographers, changing its focus from entertainment to “problem” cinema.
He died in October 2003 after a stroke.