---
name: "Sergei Bodrov"
canonical: "https://film.one/person/sergei-bodrov"
fi1m_id: "sergei-bodrov"
imdb_id: "nm0091076"
tmdb_id: 130938
wikidata_id: "Q941532"
roles: ["Director"]
born: "28 June 1948"
reviewed_on_fi1m: 1
average_as: "director"
average_over: 1
updated: "2026-10-05T13:38:07.007607+00:00"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Sergei Bodrov

## Identity

Sergei Bodrov

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/person/sergei-bodrov
- **Type:** Person
- **Fi1m ID:** sergei-bodrov
- **IMDb ID:** nm0091076
- **TMDB ID:** 130938
- **Wikidata ID:** Q941532
- **Same entity:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Bodrov, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q941532, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0091076/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/130938

Director. Born 28 June 1948 in Khabarovsk, RSFSR, USSR.

## Details

- **Work:** Director
- **Born:** 28 June 1948, Khabarovsk, RSFSR, USSR
- **Also known as:** Sergey Bodrov, С. Бодров, S. Bodrov
- **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Bodrov, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q941532, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0091076/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/130938

## Fi1m on Sergei Bodrov

> Sergei Bodrov makes films about one small figure in a large landscape, and he is at his best when the landscape is real. *Mongol* (2007) is the reputation; *Seventh Son* (2014) is what happens when the horses are made of pixels.

Put Sergei Bodrov on real ground and he knows what to do with it. *Mongol* (2007) sends a boy who will become Genghis Khan across the steppe with real horses and little talking, and the land does most of the work. That is his habit: one person, usually young, set against something far larger, a war, a country, a dynasty, and photographed small inside it. *Prisoner of the Mountains* (1996) moved a Tolstoy story to the Chechen conflict and made his name abroad by declining to pick a side. *Freedom Is Paradise* (1989) followed a boy across Kazakhstan with actors and non-actors in the same frame, and the mixing of the two has stayed with him.

He came to directing late and sideways. He trained as a scriptwriter at VGIK, graduating in 1974, and wrote for the satirical magazine Krokodil before directing from the mid-1980s for Kazakhfilm and Mosfilm. *The Non-Professionals* (1987) was banned at first; glasnost let it out. After *Prisoner of the Mountains* the films got bigger and the money came from further afield: he co-wrote *East/West* (1999) for Régis Wargnier, took over *Nomad: The Warrior* (2005) mid-production, and then made *Mongol*, shot with the Dutch cinematographer Rogier Stoffers, whom he went looking for because he wanted the best. He usually writes or co-writes what he directs, twice with Arif Aliyev.

What works is the scale when it has people in it. Bodrov can stage a cavalry charge and still keep us looking at one face. Some reviews found *Mongol* slow in places; a film that lives on riding across open country will be, and that is the price of the method. What does not work is the same scale with nothing underneath. *Seventh Son* (2014), his first Hollywood studio film, is a chosen-one fantasy built in a computer and talked through from end to end, and we sat through it waiting for a single shot of real weather that never came. The dragons weigh nothing, Jeff Bridges mumbles the rules, and only Julianne Moore seems to have noticed that the material is silly and decided to enjoy it. We were bored, and then puzzled that the man who made horses look like horses could be so indifferent to beasts that look like nothing at all.

He has said of taking that job, "I am a gambler by nature, and I wanted to try my hand at a new genre for me." The bet did not come off. He is still working, with *Breathe Easy* (2022) his latest credit, and the lesson of the career so far is a plain one: the nearer he is to a horse and the further from a render farm, the better the film.

## Biography

Sergei Bodrov is a Russian film director, screenwriter and producer. He was born on 28 June 1948 in Khabarovsk, Russian SFSR, USSR.

Bodrov directed *Prisoner of the Mountains* (1996), *Mongol* (2007) and *Seventh Son* (2014). Both *Prisoner of the Mountains* and *Mongol* received Academy Award nominations for Best Foreign Language Film. He is also known for writing or co-writing *East/West* (1999), *Sisters* (2001) and *Kalashnikov* (2020).

His son, actor Sergei Bodrov Jr., died in an avalanche in 2002. Bodrov has lived in the United States since the post-Soviet period and is married to film consultant Carolyn Cavallaro.

*Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com.*

## On Fi1m (1)

- *Seventh Son* (2014), Fi1m 35, Director — [page](https://film.one/film/seventh-son.md)

## Complete filmography (49)

Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page.

- *Land of Legends* (2022), Writer
- *Breathe Easy* (2022), Writer, Director
- *Kalashnikov AK-47* (2020), Producer, Screenplay
- *Paradise Club* (2017), Producer
- *In the Same Garden* (2016), Director
- *Knight of Cups* (2015), as Sergei
- *Seventh Son* (2014), Director — Fi1m 35, [page](https://film.one/film/seventh-son.md)
- *42 One Dream Rush* (2010), Director
- *A Yakuza's Daughter Never Cries* (2010), Director, Writer, Producer
- *Mustafa Shokai* (2008), Screenplay
- *Stories on Human Rights* (2008), Producer, Director, Writer
- *Native Dancer* (2008), Writer, Producer
- *The Drunken Sailor* (2007), Director, Writer
- *Mongol: The Rise of Genghis Khan* (2007), Director, Producer, Screenplay
- *Nomad: The Warrior* (2005), Director
- *Schizo* (2004), Producer, Writer
- *Bear's Kiss* (2002), Director, Writer, Producer
- *The Quickie* (2001), Producer, Director, Screenplay
- *Sisters* (2001), Writer
- *Running Free* (1999), Director
- *East/West* (1999), Screenplay
- *Prisoner of the Mountains* (1996), Writer, Director
- *Somebody to Love* (1994), Writer, Associate Producer
- *White King, Red Queen* (1993), Director, Writer
- *I Wanted to See Angels* (1992), Director, Writer
- *The Bird of Paradise* (1991), Writer
- *Our Man in San-Remo* (1990), Scenario Writer
- *And All the Love* (1989), Writer
- *The Son* (1989), Writer
- *Help Me, Bros!* (1989), Screenplay
- *Crazy* (1989), Writer
- *Freedom Is Paradise* (1989), Director, Writer
- *The Gambler* (1989), Director, Writer
- *Frenchman* (1988), Writer
- *The Stray White and the Speckled* (1986), Actor
- *I Hate You* (1986), Director, Writer
- *Do Not Marry, Girls* (1985), Writer
- *My Home on the Green Hills* (1985), Screenplay
- *Non-Professionals* (1985), Writer, Director
- *‎Yurka - the Son of the Commander‎* (1984), Screenplay
- *Very Important Person* (1984), Screenplay
- *Sweet Juice inside the Grass* (1984), Writer, Co-Director
- *Молодые люди* (1984), Writer
- *The Long Milky Way* (1983), Writer
- *The Mechanic Gavrilov's Beloved Woman* (1982), Writer
- *My Anfisa* (1981), Screenplay
- *Troublemaker* (1979), Writer
- *Fuse* (1962), series, Writer
- *BATU: Historical Detective*, Actor

## Gallery

- ![Sergei Bodrov](https://film.one/media/person/5711821/gallery-c049ea599c62.jpg) Sergei Bodrov — Nicogenin, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c4/Sergei_Vladimirovich_Bodrov.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled)
- ![Jury of 2009 Venice Film Festival. From left to right:Anurag Kashyap (Indian director), Sandrine Bonnaire (French actress), Joe Dante (American director), Ang L](https://film.one/media/person/5711821/gallery-944c1ffa2880.jpg) Jury of 2009 Venice Film Festival. From left to right:Anurag Kashyap (Indian director), Sandrine Bonnaire (French actress), Joe Dante (American director), Ang L — Nicogenin, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e3/Jury_du_66%C3%A8me_Festival_du_Cin%C3%A9ma_de_Venise_%28Mostra%29.jpg/1280px-Jury_du_66%C3%A8me_Festival_du_Cin%C3%A9ma_de_Venise_%28Mostra%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Sergei Bodrov at the 2013 San Diego Comic Con International in San Diego, California.](https://film.one/media/person/5711821/gallery-030bb3750ba3.jpg) Sergei Bodrov at the 2013 San Diego Comic Con International in San Diego, California. — Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/56/Sergei_Bodrov_by_Gage_Skidmore.jpg/1280px-Sergei_Bodrov_by_Gage_Skidmore.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Jeff Bridges, Ben Barnes, Sergei Bodrov, and Alicia Vikander speaking in the Seventh Son discussion during the Legendary Pictures panel at the 2011 Comic-Con In](https://film.one/media/person/5711821/gallery-a573987f2cfe.jpg) Jeff Bridges, Ben Barnes, Sergei Bodrov, and Alicia Vikander speaking in the Seventh Son discussion during the Legendary Pictures panel at the 2011 Comic-Con In — Count3D from Vancouver, Canada, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cb/Seventh_Son_panel_at_SDCC_2011_%285966847959%29.jpg/1280px-Seventh_Son_panel_at_SDCC_2011_%285966847959%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Серге́й Влади́мирович Бодро́в (28 июня 1948 года, Хабаровск) — советский и российский кинорежиссёр, сценарист, продюсер, отец актёра и кинорежиссёра Сергея Бодр (2016)](https://film.one/media/person/5711821/gallery-2b060a3bf31e.jpg) Серге́й Влади́мирович Бодро́в (28 июня 1948 года, Хабаровск) — советский и российский кинорежиссёр, сценарист, продюсер, отец актёра и кинорежиссёра Сергея Бодр (2016) — Alexander Veprev, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/%D0%A1%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B3%D0%B5%D0%B9_%D0%91%D0%BE%D0%B4%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B2_2016.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled)
- ![Серге́й Влади́мирович Бодро́в (28 июня 1948 года, Хабаровск) — советский и российский кинорежиссёр, сценарист, продюсер, отец актёра и кинорежиссёра Сергея Бодр (2016)](https://film.one/media/person/5711821/gallery-898a5edac2bc.jpg) Серге́й Влади́мирович Бодро́в (28 июня 1948 года, Хабаровск) — советский и российский кинорежиссёр, сценарист, продюсер, отец актёра и кинорежиссёра Сергея Бодр (2016) — Alexander Veprev, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/71/%D0%A1%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B3%D0%B5%D0%B9_%D0%91%D0%BE%D0%B4%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B2_%D0%B8_%D0%A1%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B3%D0%B5%D0%B9_%D0%A1%D0%B5%D0%BB%D1%8C%D1%8F%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2_2016.jpg/1280px-%D0%A1%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B3%D0%B5%D0%B9_%D0%91%D0%BE%D0%B4%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B2_%D0%B8_%D0%A1%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B3%D0%B5%D0%B9_%D0%A1%D0%B5%D0%BB%D1%8C%D1%8F%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2_2016.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)

## Awards

### Other awards — 2 won, 1 nominated

- European Film Award – People's Choice Award for Best European Film 2008: European Film Award – People's Choice Award for Best European Film (nominated), for *Mongol*
- European Film Award for Best Screenwriter 1996: European Film Award for Best Screenwriter (won), for *Prisoner of the Mountains*
- Wolfgang Staudte Award 1990: Wolfgang Staudte Award (won), for *Freedom Is Paradise*

*From Wikidata, which records wins more completely than nominations.*

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/sergei-bodrov