Yuliya Solntseva

Yuliya Ippolitovna Solntseva (7 August 1901 – 28 October 1989) was a Soviet actress and film director. As an actress, she is known for starring in the silent sci-fi classic Aelita (1924). She is the first female winner of the Best Director Award at Cannes film festival in the 20th century and the first woman to win a directing prize at any of the major European film festivals, for the film Chronicle of Flaming Years, a war drama about Soviet resistance to Nazi occupation in 1941.

Biography

Solntseva directed 14 films between 1939 and 1979. She was married to director Aleksandr Dovzhenko and collaborated with him on his later films, including Michurin (1949), for which she was awarded a Stalin Prize.

For The Chronicle of Flaming Years she won the Best Director award at the 1961 Cannes Film Festival. She was named a People's Artist of the USSR when she turned 80.