Grigori Kromanov

Grigori Kromanov (1926-1984) was a renowned Estonian film and theatre director. He graduated from Moscow’s GITIS drama school in 1953 before returning to Tallinn to begin his artistic career on the stage and in television. In the 1960s, he moved to the national Tallinnfilm studio, where he made a name as one of the most prominent Estonian film artists of the period. His 1969 period romance The Last Relic set box office records in the USSR. Other notable films included Diamonds for the Dictatorship of the Proletariat (1976), based on the detective novel by Yulian Semyonov, and Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel (1979), an adaptation of a sci-fi novel by the Strugatsky Brothers. In the face of increased Russification of Estonia’s cultural sphere, he returned to theatre in the 1980s, mostly at Tallinn’s Russian Dramatic Theatre.