Nikolai Burlyayev

Nikolai Petrovich Burlyayev (; born 3 August 1946) is a Soviet and Russian actor and film director. Born into a family of actors, Burlyayev started his career in film and theatre when he was still a child. He is best known for his title role in Andrei Tarkovsky's Ivan's Childhood. He worked with Tarkovsky again four years later, as Boriska in Andrei Rublev. He was elected to the State Duma in the 2021 parliamentary elections. Biography Burlyayev majored in acting at the Shchukin theater school in Moscow, graduating in 1967. Burlyayev is a graduate of the Film Directors’ Faculty of VGIK, where he studied under Mikhail Romm and Lev Kulidzhanov. He graduated in 1975. Burlyayev's film acting debut was the lead in Andrei Konchalovsky's short film The Boy and the Dove (1960). Burliaev played the teacher with a gambling habit Aleksei Ivanovich in Aleksei Batalov's screen version of Dostoevsky's The Gambler (1972) and Evgeni in Mikhail Shveitser's Little Tragedies (1979, TV, from Aleksandr Pushkin). He also played supporting parts in Petr Todorovski's Frontline Romance (1983) and in Natalia Bondarchuk's dilogy Bambi's Childhood (1985) and Bambi’s Youth (1986). His later films include Wartime Romance (1983) and Lermontov (1986), where he played the lead. Since 1991, Burlyayev has been the founder and director of the annual Zolotoi Vityaz (Golden Knight) Moscow Film Festival of Slavic and Orthodox Peoples, and since 1996 he has been the founder and chairman of the International Association of Cinematographers of Slavic and Orthodox Peoples.