Nikolay Bem

Russia

Details

Nicolay Bem was born in 1977 in Neryoungri, Yakutia. He began working as a director in the 2000s for Krasnoyarsk television. In 2007, he created SiberiaDOC, a Franco-Russian initiative to develop independent cinema in Siberia, which aims to create movies outside of the major cultural centers of Moscow and Saint Petersburg.

As director of the Siberian Independent Film Studio, he went on to lead the Siberian School of New Cinema project in Krasnoyarsk, an educational project offering courses in fiction and documentary filmmaking. In 2021, he was awarded the Russian Knowledge Society Prize « For his contribution to education in the field of culture and the arts. »

His latest documentary film, Kotlovan, received the award for Best Editing at the DOKer International Documentary Film Festival in Moscow in 2025.

Filmography (1) +

🎨 Feature films (1)

2025 – Kotlovan (Котлован) Role : Director, Screenwriter, Producer
Synopsis : The story of an old Siberian quarry, the fate of the people living on its edge, and its possible future.

Synopsis : The story of an old Siberian quarry, the fate of the people living on its edge, and its possible future.

Citations (2) +

« Being in Mirny, I caught myself a feeling that the whole atmosphere around the town and the Mir quarry is amazingly similar to a book by one of Russia's most famous writers, Andrei Platonov, "Kotlovan", where the author talks about a social experiment, about the process of building an all- proletarian house, about happiness for future generations, an ideal society, about the meaning of human existence. »
Nikolay Bem

« For me, the giant pit is a symbol of a contradiction, of an unresolved generational dilemma. What should we do with the pit left to us as an inheritance from the last generation ? What is this inheritance ? Is it a pit to build a new common house that did not exist before ? Or a symbol of the inevitable catastrophe on earth, which man creates with his own hands ? »
Nikolay Bem