Avdotya Smirnova

Avdotya Andreevna Smirnova, known as Dunya, was born on June 29, 1969, in Moscow. She is a multifaceted Russian filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, television host, and literary critic, recognized for her numerous awards and her philanthropic efforts through the charity foundation Vikhod. Dunya is the daughter of the esteemed Soviet-Russian director and actor Andrei Smirnov and actress Natalya Rudnaya, with a literary legacy stemming from her grandfather, Sergey Smirnov, a respected Soviet writer and historian.

From a young age, Smirnova exhibited a passion for cinema. Despite her father's initial opposition to her attending the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography, she pursued studies in Philology at Moscow State University before transferring to GITIS. Her career began in the late 1980s at Mosfilm, where she collaborated with Sergei Solovyov while also participating in the punk-rock band Tupie and contributing to the samizdat publication Urlait.

Her journalistic career took off in 1995 with a role at Kommersant, and she later contributed to notable magazines such as Afisha and Vogue. Smirnova co-hosted the award-winning talk show The School for Scandal from 2002 to 2014, alongside writer Tatyana Tolstaya.

In film, Smirnova's notable works include screenplays for The Last Hero (1992), Butterfly (1993), and Gisele's Mania (1995). Her directorial debut, The Connection (2006), marked the beginning of her directing career, followed by acclaimed films like Two Days (2011) and Kokoko (2012), the latter earning prestigious awards. She continued to explore diverse narratives with projects such as Peterburg: only by love (2016) and The Story of a Single Purpose (2018), culminating in the 2021 release of Vertinsky, an eight-part series about the iconic