Alexander Nikolayevich Sokurov, PAR (; born 14 June 1951) is a Russian filmmaker. His most significant works include a feature film, Russian Ark (2002), filmed in a single unedited shot, and Faust (2011), which was honoured with the Golden Lion, the highest prize for the best film at the Venice Film Festival. Life and work Sokurov was born in Podorvikha, Irkutsky District, in Siberia, into a military officer's family. He graduated from the History Department of the Nizhny Novgorod University in 1974 and entered one of the VGIK studios the following year. There he became friends with Tarkovsky and was deeply influenced by his film Mirror. Most of Sokurov's early features were banned by Soviet authorities. During his early period, he produced numerous documentaries, including The Dialogues with Solzhenitsyn and a reportage about Grigori Kozintsev's flat in Saint Petersburg. His film Mournful Unconcern was nominated for the Golden Bear at the 37th Berlin International Film Festival in 1987. Mother and Son (1997) was his first internationally acclaimed feature film. It was entered into the 20th Moscow International Film Festival where it won the Special Silver St. George. It was mirrored by Father and Son (2003), which baffled the critics with its implicit homoeroticism (though Sokurov himself has criticized this particular interpretation). Susan Sontag included two Sokurov features among her ten favorite films of the 1990s, saying: "There’s no director active today whose films I admire as much." In 2006, he received the Master of Cinema Award of the International Filmfestival Mannheim-Heidelberg. Sokurov is a Cannes Film Festival regular, with four of his movies having debuted there. However, until 2011, Sokurov didn't win top awards at major international festivals. For a long time, his most commercially and critically successful film was the semi-documentary Russian Ark (2002), acclaimed primarily for its visually hypnotic images and single unedited shot. Sokurov has filmed a tetralogy exploring the corrupting effects of power. The first three installments were dedicated to prominent 20th-century rulers: Moloch (1999), about Hitler, Taurus (2001), about Lenin, and The Sun (2005) about Hirohito. In 2011, Sokurov shot the last part of the series, Faust, a retelling of Goethe's tragedy. The film, depicting instincts and schemes of Faust in his lust for power, premiered on 8 September 2011 in competition at the 68th Venice International Film Festival. The film won the Golden Lion, the highest award of the Venice Festival. Producer Andrey Sigle