photo
photo

TOP: Rudnitskaya accepts an award for her film Kiss Me Harder in Moscow in December, 2007
BOTTOM: A still from Rudnitskaya's widely acclaimed film, Civil Status

ALINA RUDNITSKAYA

Program Bio
October-November 2005: New York and the Athens Film Festival, Athens, Ohio
Back to More Open World Past Participants in Film

Alina Rudnitskaya is a graduate of the St. Petersburg University for Arts and Culture’s Department of Film Directing. She started her career as an Assistant Director at the St. Petersburg Documentary Film Studio. Her first films, The Letter and Living Together were well-received both in Russia and abroad, receiving awards at many domestic and international film festivals, including Message to Man (2003, St. Petersburg), Neubrandenburg IFF (2003, Germany), and others. Living Together was part of a larger project, St. Petersburg 2003. After the project was completed, she was invited to work in Moscow on a documentary film series Dating Service about single people looking for their other halves. At the same time, she worked on a project called Faces of the Epoch, directing such films as Vishnevskaya and Rostropovich. In 2004, her project for one of the major St. Petersburg TV stations – a film series on Russian pop group TATU – won an award for the best documentary series. In 2003-2004, she continued making documentary films, such as Amazons and Village Lessons. Currently, she is working on a new film and is full of new ideas for future work. Rudnitskaya’s films always have a characteristic original perspective; she is interested not only in depicting the facts of life but also in exploring the internal worlds of her characters. She succeeds in painting a vivid image of modern man while maintaining a very personal and humanistic approach to each one of her stories.

Career Updates

Since participating in the 2005 program at Athens Center for Film and Video, Ms. Rudnitskaya has received international attention for her film, Civil Status, (Grazjdanskoye Sostoyaniye). Distinctions include:
  • Best Documentary Film at the 2006 Kinoblik Festival in Stuttgart, Germany
  • First Prize at the 2006 International Short Film Festival at Oberhausen
  • “The Big Stamp Award” for Best Film in the International Competition at the 2007 ZagrebDox International Documentary Film Festival, Zagreb, Croatia
  • The Grand Prix prize at the 2006 International Short Film Festival in Drama, Greece
  • Grazjdanskoye Sostoyaniye was also screened at Rotterdam, the Chicago International Film Festival, and the Center for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow, and is included in The Cinema Guild’s short list of “Acclaimed and Award-Winning Documentaries for Russian Eastern European Studies”.

  • Rudnitskaya’s film, Besame Mucho won the Jury First Prize for Short Documentary at the Documenta Madrid film festival, 2007
  • Additionally, Rudnitskaya's film Kiss Me Harder, (Tselui menya krepchye), which follows a women's choir in a small Russian town, was awarded the prize for Best Work on Film at the 2007 Laurel Branch Documentary Film Festival in Moscow.