Svetlana Proskurina is a director and screen writer. After graduating from Saint Petersburg State Theatre Arts Academy in 1976, she attended Higher Courses for Screenwriters and Directors in Moscow (1981). She began working in film at the Lenfilm Studio. She made her cinema debut with the short Parents' Day (1981).
The unique cinematic style and aesthetics of Svetlana Proskurina's films have been highly acclaimed at various international film festivals. Her first full-length film Playground (1986) was invited in competition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. Her next picture – Accidental Waltz (1989) – brought the director Golden Leopard from the Locarno International Film Festival. Her film Reflection in the Mirror was premiered in 1992 at the Cannes Directors' Fortnight.
From the mid-1990s, which was a difficult time for the entire Russian film industry, Proskurina was constrained to give up fiction films, and for some time devoted her attention to documentaries. She made a series of films for the Russian TV channel “Cukture” about famous people in the world of the arts – the sculptors Ernst Neizvestny and Mikhail Shemyakin, the actors Mikhail Pugovkin and Vladimir Ilin, and the director Aleksandr Sokurov. Much later, in 2010, she would shoot A Solo Race against the Clock, a documentary about the Russo-American artist Yuri Kuper.
Svetlana Proskurina's return to the big screen occurred in 2004, when Remote Access was invited for showing in the main competition at the Venice Film Festival. Three years later her new film The Best of Times (2007) was premiered at the 37th International Film Festival Rotterdam, where a retrospective of Svetlana Proskurina's films was also shown. In 2010 Truce was awarded the Grand Prix at the Open Russian Film Festival “Kinotavr”, and was also screened at festivals in Montreal, Munich, Pusan, among others.
Svetlana Proskurina’s cinema represents a bold, honest and stylistically measured conversation, where the audience, together with the characters, is engaged in the essence of what transpires. Sometimes this changes their view of themselves and of their environment.
Sunday continues a degree of individuality in Proskurina's style, a special seriousness in treating of the human soul. The story of a single day in the life of a provincial civil servant with its mundane events (a meeting with his ex-wife, relationships within his family, a work-related visit...) constantly demonstrates how the concept of "the superfluous man", which came to us from XIX century Russian literature, has been distorted, but remains relevant today.
This concept is inevitably tragic at all times. This entails that the conversation with the audience never loses its warmth, and continues to manifest Proskurina's very personal vision.
- 2019 — Sunday / Voskreseniye | director
- 2014 — Goodbye Mom / Do Svidaniya Mama | director
- 2010 — Truce / Peremirie | director | Main Prize at the Kinotavr National FF, Russia
- 2007 — The Best of Times / Luchsheye Vremya Goda | director
- 2004 — Remote Access / Udalyonyi Dostup | director, writer | nominated for Golden Lion at the Venice FF, Italy
- 2002 — Russian Ark / Russkiy Kovcheg | coauthor of screenplay | nominated for Palme d'Or at the Cannes FF, France
- 1992 — Reflection in The Mirror / Otrazhenie v Zerkale | director | participated in the Directors' Fortnight at the Cannes FF, France
- 1989 — Accidental Waltz / Sluchainyi Val's | director | Golden Leopard at the Locarno IFF, Switzerland | Grand Prix at the Marseille IFF, France
- 1986 — Playground / Detskaya Ploshchadka | director
- 1982 — Parent's Day / Roditel'skiy Den' | director