Mark Donskoy

Mark Semyonovich Donskoy (21 March 1981) was a Soviet film director, screenwriter, and studio administrative head.

Biography Mark Donskoy was born in Odessa in a Jewish family. During the Civil War, he served in the Red Army (1921–1923), and was held captive by the White Russians for ten months. After he was freed, he was discharged from military service.

He studied psychology and psychiatry at the Crimean Medical School. In 1925, he graduated from the legal department of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the Crimean M.V. Frunze University in Simferopol. He worked in investigative bodies, in the Supreme Court of the Ukrainian SSR, and the bar association. He published a collection of short stories drawn from his life called Prisoners (1925).

His wife was the screenwriter (19181983).

Selected filmography The Childhood of Maxim Gorky (1938) Gorky 2: My Apprenticeship (1939) Gorky 3: My Universities (1940) How the Steel Was Tempered (1942) (1942) (aka Diary of a Nazi) Rainbow (1944) (1945) Alitet Leaves for the Hills (1949) Mother (1955) (1957) Foma Gordeyev (1959) A Mother's Heart (1965)

Honours and awards Stalin Prizes: second degree (1941) – for The Childhood of Maxim Gorky (1938) and People (1939) first degree (1946) – for Rainbow (1943) first degree (1948) – for Village Teacher (1947) USSR State Prize (1968) – for Heart Mother (1966) People's Artist of USSR (1966) Hero of Socialist Labour (1971) Two Orders of Lenin Order of the October Revolution (18 March 1981) Order of the Red Banner of Labour Highest Award of the American Film Critics Association 1944 – for Rainbow Award of Daily News – for best foreign film shown in the U.S. in 1944 (Rainbow) Grand Prize at the Venice Film Festival 1946 – for The Unvanquished Special prize of the Italian journalists Venice IFF 1948 – for My Universities Award for Best Director, Film Festival in Paris 1949 – for The Country Teacher First Prize in Stockholm International Film Festival 1949 – for My Universities Prize R. Unningtona Edinburgh International Film Festival in 1955 – for The Childhood of Maxim Gorky, The People and My Universities Prize for best director at the Locarno International Film Festival 1960 – for Foma Gordeyev Special Diploma in Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 1970 – for Rainbow