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, Thalia Theater Hamburg, Théâtre du Châtelet and Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus.
As an opera director, he has worked with leading opera houses and international festivals, including the Mariinsky Theatre, Bolshoi Theatre, Komische Oper Berlin, Staatsoper Stuttgart, Zurich Opera House, Staatsoper Hamburg, Vienna State Opera, Bavarian State Opera, Dutch National Opera, Opéra national de Paris, and the Salzburg Easter Festival.
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), which was presented in a new version by Staatsballett Berlin in 2026.
Serebrennikov’s theatre works have been featured at the Festival d’Avignon for several years in a row. In 2019, the 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 has also worked extensively in film and television. His filmography includes Playing the Victim, Bed Scenes, Yuri’s 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 Josef 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 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. Serebrennikov served as artistic director of the Gogol Center 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 bringing 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, the TEFI Award (2005), Benois de la Danse (for Nureyev, 2018), the main prize at the Rome Film Festival (for Playing the Victim, 2006), recognition at the Locarno Film Festival (for Yuri’s Day, 2008), and the Europe Prize New Theatrical Realities (2017). His films have also been selected for the Venice Film Festival and the Cannes Film Festival, 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.