The darling of the screen: Tigran Keosayan has died

Famous film director, TV and radio presenter Tigran Keosyan has died. This was announced on September 26 by his wife, Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of the Rossiya Segodnya international media group and RT TV channel. In early January, Simonyan announced that her husband had suffered a clinical death and was in a coma. Keosayan is a man who has successfully performed in a variety of roles in show business. In the 1990s, he was a successful music video maker, then a director, TV presenter, and producer... In every lesson, Keosayan was successful. He himself believed that he was lucky in life: after all, being a native of the "dashing nineties", he more than once seriously risked facing a sadder fate. Izvestia tells about the main pages of the biography of the director and TV presenter.

The path to the profession

Tigran Keosyan was born on January 4, 1966 in Moscow, into a family of cinematographers. His father was the famous film director Edmond Keosayan, his mother was the actress, Honored Artist of the Armenian SSR Laura Gevorgyan. In the year of the birth of his youngest son, Edmond Keosayan rose to the heights of all—Union fame: his most famous film, The Elusive Avengers, was released. The director was in high demand, the audience was expecting the continuation of the picture — therefore it is not surprising that little Tigran spent more time on the set than at home. His own film debut took place in the film "The Crown of the Russian Empire, or the Elusive Ones Again," where the entire Keosayan family played. The director himself played the cameo role of a cabaret visitor, his wife is a nurse, and his eldest son, David, is a gypsy girl. Tigran also appeared in the episode — however, according to the stories, most of all the young actor and his colleagues in the film were impressed by the eyebrow he broke on the set and the search for a doctor by the director and the director of the picture.

After graduating from high school, Tigran entered the directing department of VGIK in 1984, in the workshop of Igor Talankin. After two years of study, he served in the army and returned to the course. His classmates were Renata Litvinova, Marat Bashirov, Ivan Okhlobystin and Fyodor Bondarchuk. The latter became a close friend and colleague for Keosayan Jr. for many years. He also played the main role in Tigran's first independent film, the short film Sunny Beach. And in 1992, his first full—length work was released, the crime melodrama Katka and Shiz, which won the Golden Knight Film Festival prize.

After VGIK, Keosayan left big cinema for several years, becoming one of the most successful Russian music video makers. In 1993, together with his older brother David, he founded the Gold Vision studio, where he worked with Fyodor Bondarchuk. One of their first collaborations was the music video for Natalia Vetlitskaya's song "Look into my Eyes." Subsequently, they worked with many figures of Russian show business, including Igor Sarukhanov, Mikhail Shufutinsky, Irina Allegrova. But the cinema wouldn't let go, and in the second half of the 1990s, Keosayan returned to the director's chair.

Return to cinema

Tigran Keosayan's return to the film business proved to be a triumph. In the late 1990s, he released three films in a row, which instantly gained popularity. Alexander Zbruev and Vera Glagoleva starred in Poor Sasha (1997), a comedy about the little daughter of a banker who blackmails a thief into robbing her mother's bank. The film won the TEFI in the Best Feature Film category, and Alexander Zbruev was awarded in the Best Actor at Kinotavr nomination. The comedy film "The President and his Granddaughter" starring Oleg Tabakov received a special prize from the Kinotavr Film Festival "For humor and kindness on the screen." And the melodrama about a provincial singer and her producers "Silver Lily of the Valley" released in 2000 made all fans of the genre cry, for which she received the well-deserved Grand Jury Prize at the Window to Europe Film Festival.

Since then, Tigran Keosayan has repeatedly demonstrated that he can work with any genre in cinema. From the good-natured humor of "The Hare over the Abyss" to the harsh realities of the GRU special forces series "Men's Work," his films have consistently received wide public attention. His last full-length film was the drama "Immortals" about the "Afghan" soldiers who met twenty years later. According to the director, with this film he paid tribute to his generation, whose youth fell on crucial years in the history of the country, which dramatically changed and broke many destinies.

On-screen and off-screen

In 2003, Tigran Keosayan began working with television, becoming a member of the jury of the People's Artist television project. However, he did not stay in the role of a spectator for long, a few years later, Keosayan successfully tried himself as a TV presenter. Here, as in the movies, he tried a variety of TV genres. Since 2007, he hosted the author's talk show "Evening with Tigran Keosyan," and in December of the same year he acted as a co-host of the New Year's Eve show "New Year on the Contrary." Since 2009, he hosted the talk show "You and Me", dedicated to the family life of star couples, and a year later he became the host of the author's talk show "Hot Evening with Tigran Keosayan". Since 2016, the director began hosting the TV show "International Sawmill", combining the two genres of journalism closest to him — international political analysis and sparkling humor.

Tigran Keosayan was married twice. His first wife was the actress Alena Khmelnitskaya. In a marriage that lasted two decades, two daughters were born — Alexandra and Ksenia. Tigran Keosayan's second wife is journalist and media manager Margarita Simonyan. They have three children growing up in their family — daughters Mariana and Maro and son Bagrat. Director Alexandra's eldest daughter took over the family professional baton from a young age, working with her father on the set.

Keosayan's heart problems started a long time ago, he survived two myocardial infarctions — in 2008 and 2010 — and the installation of a pacemaker. In December 2024, he was hospitalized again with a heart attack, suffered clinical death and fell into a coma.