Vladimir Fetin

Vladimir Aleksandrovich Fetin (; 14 October 1925 — 20 August 1981) was a Soviet film director. He was named Merited Artist of the RSFSR in 1975. Biography Vladimir Fetin was born in Moscow into a noble Russian-German Fetting family which traced its history to Pyotr Ivanovich Fetting (born Pierre Friedrich de Fetting), a military engineer who moved to the Russian Empire from Berlin in 1812. In 1943 he was enlisted in the Red Army and fought in the first reserve artillery corps. He changed several professions after the war, then entered the director's faculty at VGIK, a workshop led by Sergei Gerasimov which he finished in 1959. His diploma short The Colt based on Mikhail Sholokhov's story saw a theatrical release by Lenfilm where he had been working since. It was compared favourably with the French movie White Mane by foreign critique. Fetting's surname appeared as "Fetin" in the credits, he adopted it and used in all of his movies. In 1960 he was approached with an ambitious screenplay of a comedy about a ship overran by tigers. It was written with the famous tiger tamer Margarita Nazarova in mind who agreed to play the main part while her husband and circus partner Konstantin Konstantinovsky was to manage tigers and perform various stunts. Striped Trip was shot on board of a motor vessel in the Black Sea, with ten tigers, a lion and a chimpanzee acting along with popular comedy actors. It was released in 1961 to an overwhelming success, becoming the Soviet box leader with 45.8 mln viewers.