Ivan Okhlobystin

Ivan Ivanovich Okhlobystin (born  22 July 1966) is a Russian Orthodox priest, actor, director and screenwriter. By his own choice, he is temporarily suspended as priest from the ministry of the Russian Orthodox Church. He is the creative director of the company Baon.

Early life

Ivan Ivanovich Okhlobystin was born on 22 July 1966 in the recreation center "Polenovo" (Zaoksky District of the Tula Oblast), where his father, Ivan Ivanovich Okhlobystin, was a military doctor, and a participant in the Great Patriotic War. He was then 62 years old, and worked as the head physician at Polenovo. His mother, Albina Ivanovna Stavitskaya,(Okhlobystina by her first marriage) (maiden name Belyaeva), was an engineer-economist. She was then a 19-year-old student. His mother remarried to Anatoly Stavitsky, and Ivan had a brother Stanislav Stavitsky. For some time the family lived in a village near Maloyaroslavets in the Kaluga Oblast, afterwards they all moved to Moscow.

After graduation, he entered the directing faculty at VGIK. Ivan studied on the same course with many future luminaries of Russian cinema: Tigran Keosayan, Bakhtiyar Khudoynazarov, Fyodor Bondarchuk, Aleksandr Bashirov, Rashid Nugmanov and others. On the parallel course (at the screenwriting faculty) Renata Litvinova, Roman Kachanov and others were studying at that time. Subsequently, Ivan continued the friendship and cooperation which began at the institute with many of them.

Without graduating, he was drafted into the army. After serving in the rocket forces in Rostov-on-Don, he reinstated himself at the institute. There he completely immersed himself in public work and was elected secretary of the Union of Cinematographers of the USSR. In 1992 he graduated from the directing department of VGIK (workshop of Igor Talankin).

Career

Success in the 1990s — present day

Okhlobystin's career began with the picture "The Leg" by Nikita Tyagunov, which was released on the screens in 1991, he received the prize as best actor at the festival "Molodost-1991" (because of superstitious reasons he was credited under the pseudonym of Ivan Chuzhoy). The first script written by Ivan Okhlobystin - for the film "The Freak" directed by Roman Kachanov - was nominated for the prestigious award "Green Apple, Gold Leaf". The first full-length director's work of Okhlobystin - "Arbiter" with a soundtrack featuring the bands Piknik and "Obermaneken" - was awarded the Kinotavr award in the category "Films for the Elect". In 1997, Okhlobystin acted in the movie Mama Don't Cry in an episodic role of a bandit.

At the same time Okhlobystin took part in theatrical productions. On February 16, 1996, in the Moscow Art Theater premiered a theatre piece based on his play "The Villain, or Cry of the Dolphin" staged by Mikhail Efremov. In the same Moscow Art Theater, a second theatre piece of Okhlobystin was staged: "Maximilian the Stylite", in 1999 the director Roman Kachanov adapted the play about the new-born seer for film and released it under the title of "Maximilian". In the late 1990s, Ivan wrote for the magazine "Stolitsa" but soon left the publication, because as he said, it turned into a "brothel", then worked in the staff of the weekly "Vesti".

In 1999 Ivan Okhlobystin acted in the popular crime-comedy 8 ½ $ directed by Grigori Konstantinopolsky together with Fyodor Bondarchuk.

Work in the cinema continued in 2000 with the cult film Demobbed, the script to which Okhlobystin wrote in co-authorship with the film's director Kachanov; the plot of the film was partly based on Okhlobystin's own memories of service in the army. In 2001, based on his own screenplay, the same director shot one more comedy - Down House.

In addition, he was the screenwriter of the philosophical drama Garbage Man (2001) directed by Georgi Shengelia.

Between 2010 and 2016 he played the cynical head of the therapy department Andrey Bykov, in the medical sitcom Interns which aired on TNT.

In 2017 he starred in comedy-drama Bird about a rock musician who becomes friends with a girl suffering from tuberculosis.