Anna Melikyan

Born

1976-02-08

Birthplace

Baku, Azerbaijan SSR, USSR (Azerbaijan)

Biography

Anna Gagikovna Melikyan (Armenian: Աննա Գագիկի Մելիքյան; Russian: А́нна Гаги́ковна Меликя́н; born 8 February 1976, Baku) is an Azerbaijan-Armenian filmmaker, screenwriter, producer and TV director/producer, who works in Russia. She is best known for the film "Mermaid" (2008), which received many international and national awards. After her participation at Sundance and Berlin Film Festivals, she was listed in the TOP-10 of most perspective film directors by "Variety" magazine. Anna Melikyan was born in Baku (USSR, now Azerbaijan) and grew up in Yerevan (USSR, now Armenia). At the age of 17, she moved to Moscow. In the mid-1990s, Anna Melikyan was a television director, wrote scripts for commercials and television programs, worked in the team of Yevgeny Ginzburg, and participated in the creation of New Year's show programs. In 1998 — he directed the opening and closing ceremonies of the Moscow International film festival. In 2002, she graduated from the directing department of "VGIK" (workshop of S. Solovyov, V. Rubinchik). The first feature film was "Mars", which premiered at the 2004 Berlin film festival. The second feature film "Mermaid" won the "Best Director Award" at the Sundance Film Festival, the FIPRESCI prize at the Berlin Film Festival, and was a Russian Oscar Nominee in 2008. For the film "Star" in 2014, Anna received the prize for "Best Director" at the "Kinotavr" Festival. In 2015, for the film-almanac "About Love", she received two main prizes at "Kinotavr" - the "Grand Prix" for the best film and the "Jury Prize" of film distributors. American magazine "Variety" included Melikyan in the top ten most promising Directors in the world. Anna created the "Magnum Film" company, which is engaged in the production of films and television series, as well as the search and production of new talents.