Kirill
Serebrennikov
Born in 1969, Kirill Serebrennikov graduated from Rostov State University.
He has directed numerous stage productions at leading drama theatres including the Moscow Art Theatre, the Pushkin Theatre, the Sovremennik Theatre, the Latvian National Theatre, Deutsches Theater Berlin, and Thalia Theater Hamburg.
As an opera director, he has staged productions at major opera houses such as Mariinsky Theatre, Bolshoi Theatre, Komische Oper Berlin, Staatsoper Stuttgart, Zurich Opera House, Staatsoper Hamburg, Vienna State Opera, Bavarian State Opera, Dutch National Opera, and the Opéra National de Paris.
As director, set designer, and librettist, he created two acclaimed ballet productions for the Bolshoi Theatre: A Hero of Our Time (2015) and Nureyev (2018).
Serebrennikov's theatre works have been featured at the Festival d’Avignon for several years in a row. In 2019, Festival d’Avignon invited him to create the original production - Outside, which was named the year’s best foreign performance by French critics. In 2022, a special festival version of The Black Monk—originally premiered at Thalia Theater in Hamburg —opened the Avignon Festival at the Palais des Papes.
Serebrennikov also has been working extensively in film and television. His filmography includes: Playing the Victim, Bed Scenes, Yuriyev Day, Short Circuit (Shrimp’s Kiss), Betrayal, The Student, Leto, After Leto (“After ‘Summer’”), Petrov’s Flu, Tchaikovsky’s Wife, Limonov: The Ballad, and The Disappearance of Joseph Mengele.
From 2006 to 2015, he was one of the artistic directors of the TERRITORY festival-school.
In 2011 in Moscow, Serebrennikov launched PLATFORM — an experimental project conceived as a multidisciplinary venue for contemporary art, combining theatre, dance, music, and media, where he worked as its artistic director until 2014.
In 2011, together with graduates from his directing and acting class at the Moscow Art Theatre School, he founded the company Seventh Studio, which became the core artistic team of the Gogol Center led by Kirill Serebrennikov as artistic director from 2012 to 2021. Under his leadership, the Gogol Center emerged as one of Moscow’s most vibrant and influential drama theatres, as well as a multidisciplinary cultural space that brought together musical concerts, exhibitions, film screenings, and public lectures.
His accomplishments in theatre, film, television, and ballet have earned Serebrennikov numerous prestigious awards including the Stanislavsky Award (2005), the Golden Mask Award, TEFI Award (2005), Benois de la Danse (for Nureyev, 2018), the main prize at the Rome Film Festival (for Playing the Victim, 2006), and recognition at the Locarno Film Festival (for Yuriyev Day, 2008). His works have been selected for the Venice Film Festival, the Cannes Film Festival, the Europe Theatre Prize New Theatrical Realities, among many others.
In August 2018, Serebrennikov was named a Commander of the French Order of Arts and Letters. In May 2025, he was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour.
In 2023, he founded his own theatre company, KIRILL & FRIENDS, based in Berlin.