A St. Petersburg resident, Alexander Sokurov was born in Siberia in 1951. Because his father was in the military, he spent much of his childhood in Poland and Turkistan. He studied history at the University of Gorky before attending Moscow′s prestigious film academy VGIK. He made his first feature, THE LONELY VOICE OF MAN, in 1978 as his graduation project, but it was rejected by the school. The numerous films he made at the Leningrad Documentary Film Studios were also banned until 1986. His filmography includes THE STONE (1992), WHISPERING PAGES (1993), MOTHER AND SON (1996), MOLOCH (1999), TAURUS (2001), ELEGY OF A VOYAGE (2001) and RUSSIAN ARK (2002).