Nikolai Burlyaev, the Russian actor, film director, writer and public figure, turned 80 on August 3, and Vechernyaya Moskva interviewed him for the occasion.
Burlyaev said his most important achievements began with his roles in Andrei Tarkovsky's films "Ivan's Childhood" and "Andrei Rublev," which he called among the best films of all time. He said his childhood dream was to become a writer and director rather than an actor, and that dream has now come true. He became a director long ago and has written for more than 60 years, he said, but gained wide recognition as a writer only this year, when he won the Patriarchal Literary Prize in 2026.
Burlyaev said he considers the Patriarchal Literary Prize more important than the Nobel Prize in literature, arguing the Nobel has been debased and is often given to Russophobes. He said he was nominated for the Patriarchal prize three years running, remaining only a nominee for the first two, and later learned that jury members had cast more votes for him than for any other candidate.
Golden Knight forum and Cultural Front
Burlyaev said he is proud of founding the Golden Knight film forum in 1992, which he said pushed back against the decline of Russian cinema and culture in the 1990s under the motto "For moral ideals, for the elevation of the human soul." He said that stance was unfashionable at the time but that words he spoke at the forum's opening, calling for the preservation of morality, have since become the basis of state policy.
He also said he is proud of founding the Cultural Front movement in 2023, which brings together leading Russian artists and now has branches in 60 regions. Its co-chairs include conductor Valery Gergiev, director Andrei Konchalovsky, musician Yuri Bashmet and writer Zakhar Prilepin, and Burlyaev said every creative union in the country has joined the movement.
New books, including a philosophical novel
Burlyaev has written 10 books, he said. His latest, "Zoloto Proveryaetsya v Kipenii" ("Gold Is Tested in Boiling"), is the fourth in a series following three earlier volumes of 350 to 400 pages each, mixing his historical novella "Sergei of Radonezh," the screenplay "Rescuers," memoirs of his friends and lectures from the course "Author's Directing" he teaches at VGIK, Russia's state film school. He said he named the course after Andrei Tarkovsky and believes it has no equivalent elsewhere, since it teaches screenwriting, directing and acting together, following filmmakers such as Vasily Shukshin, Sergei Bondarchuk and Nikita Mikhalkov, who could write, direct and act.
Burlyaev said he will publish a new collection of screenplays, "Zrimoe Slovo Kino" ("The Visible Word of Cinema"), in about a month, followed by the second part of his novel "Bliznetsy" ("Twins"). He described it as a philosophical novel following two versions of the same man, one brother moving upward toward the Creator and enlightenment, the other downward toward damnation and self-destruction, spanning 1945 to 2026. Readers have told him the first part, covering 1945 to 1986, should be taught in schools, he said.
From feature films to documentaries
Burlyaev said he has made five documentaries despite never expecting to become a documentarian and once ranking the genre below feature filmmaking. In 2021 he made a film marking the 25th anniversary of the shelling of the White House, telling the story of an Alpha special forces colonel who he said prevented civil war by refusing President Boris Yeltsin's order to clear the building of deputies, leading them out alive without bloodshed.
He then made a documentary for the 30th anniversary of Golden Knight with support from the Ministry of Culture, followed by a film about Tarkovsky for what would have been the director's 90th birthday. He said he next decided to make a film about Nikita Mikhalkov, a friend since 1957 whom he had written about before in a novella called "Nikita" published in the journal Moskva. Before submitting it, he showed it to Mikhalkov, who told him it was all true but asked who would be interested besides the two of them and two or three other people. Burlyaev said he believed Mikhalkov's life, set against major and sometimes tragic events of the 20th and 21st centuries, would interest others, and the film became his fourth documentary.
For his 80th birthday, the Ministry of Culture supported a fifth documentary, "Fragments of God's Art," which Burlyaev said he chose to direct himself rather than let someone else fill it with flattering interviews. He called the result confessional. It aired in four 26-minute episodes on the Kultura television channel from August 3 to 6, and he said it will now be refined for theatrical release.
A return to acting
Asked whether audiences can expect to see him act again, Burlyaev said turning 80 is a lot by human standards but that he considers it "just a warm-up." He said he does not know how many years he has left, but he is returning to directing and, apparently, to acting, a profession he had avoided for the 40 years since perestroika because he did not want to take part in cinema's decline into a profit-driven business. He said times are changing, and that Russian culture and cinema need to look more deeply into themselves, into humanity and into the Creator, and serve God and the Fatherland.
