Fyodor Otsep

Fedor Ozep or Fyodor Otsep (Russian: Фёдор Алекса́ндрович О́цеп, Fyodor Aleksandrovich Otsep; February 9, 1895 – June 20, 1949) was a Russian-American film director and screenwriter, born in Moscow. An important early writer on film and film theory, he served as dramaturge for the Mezhrabpomfilm-Rus company and wrote a number of films for directors such as V.I. Pudovkin and Yakov Protazanov before turning to directing in 1926.

Ozep was born into a Jewish merchant family in Moscow; his parents Khonon and Basya Otsep owned an umbrella factory. During the production of The Living Corpse in Germany, he decided to remain and worked throughout Europe during the 1930s, enjoying international acclaim for films including The Murderer Dimitri Karamazov and Amok. With the advent of World War II he moved to Hollywood but was unable to establish a career there, directing only one film. His last two films were made in Canada. He died of a heart attack in Los Angeles in 1949.