Kira Georgievna Muratova (; ; ; née Korotkova, 5 November 1934 – 6 June 2018) was a Ukrainian award-winning film director, screenwriter and actress of Romanian/Jewish descent, known for her unusual directorial style. Muratova's films underwent a great deal of censorship in the Soviet Union, yet still Muratova managed to emerge as one of the leading figures in contemporary Cinema of Ukraine and Russian cinema and was able to build a very successful film career from 1960s onwards. She is People's Artist of Ukraine(1989); Academician of National Academy of Arts of Ukraine (1997). Laureate of the Shevchenko National Prize (1993) (in List of laureates at 1993 - № 12); Oleksandr Dovzhenko State Prize (2002). Muratova spent much of her artistic career in Odessa, creating most of her films at Odesa Film Studios. Her work has been described as possibly 'one of the most distinctive and singular oeuvres of cinematic world-making.' Biography Early life and career Kira Korotkova was born in 1934 in Soroca, Romania (present-day Moldova) to a Russian father and a Romanian mother (of Bessarabian Jewish origin). Her parents were both active communists and members of the Communist Party. Her father, , (1907-1941), participated in the anti-fascist guerilla movement in World War II, was arrested by Romanian forces and shot after interrogation. After the war, Kira lived in Bucharest with her mother, , was born Reznic, (1906—1981), a gynaecologist, who then pursued a government career in Socialist Romania. In 1959, Kira graduated from the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography in Moscow, specializing in directing. Upon graduation Korotkova received a director position with the Odessa Film Studio in Odessa, a port city at the Black Sea near to her native Bessarabia. She directed her first professional film in 1961 and worked with the studio until a professional conflict made her to move to Leningrad in 1978. There she made one film with Lenfilm Studio, but returned to Odessa afterwards. Muratova's films came under constant criticism of the Soviet officials due to her idiosyncratic film language that did not comply with the norms of socialist realism. Film scholar Isa Willinger has compared Muratova's cinematographic form to the Soviet Avant-garde, especially to Eisenstein's montage of attractions. Several times Muratova was banned from working as a director for a number of years each time. Kira married her fellow Odessa studio director Oleksandr Muratov in the early 1960s and co-created several films with him. The