Vasilina Makovtseva

Vasilina Makovtseva (Russian: Васили́на Ма́ковцева; November 14, 1977) is a Russian film and theatre actress, one of the leading figures at the Kolayda-Theatre where she worked since 2004. Makovtseva is best remembered for her leading part in Krotkaya (A gentle creature), which she represented at Cannes Film Festival in 2017. Vasilina Makovtseva was born in Turukhansk, Krasnoyarsk Krai, which was once considered a city of political prisoners. Her grandfather participated in the productions of provincial theater: he was both a decorator, and a director, and played several musical instruments. Her mother worked as a cashier at a small local airport. Vasilina's father worked as a blacksmith. There were eight children in the family and all had creative nature: one has passion in drawing, other- in writing, etc. Vasilina studied to play piano at Krasnoyarsk college of arts for 4 years.

She enrolled into the Yekaterinburg Theatre Institute and joined the Kirill Strezhnev's group. She took part in students productions on the stage of Academic Theater of Musical Comedy. There were: The Beatles: Lonely Hearts Club, Lion king, The Secret of Courage.

In 2003 she graduated from Yekaterinburg Theatre Institute and joined infamous Nikolay Kolyada`s Kolyada-theatre, where she is an actress at the moment. She has played more than thirty roles, not counting productions for children. With the theater troupe she performed at many International theater festivals: Passages in Nancy (2009) and Metz (2013), at Shakespeare in Gdansk (2011), Bucharest (2012), Gyula (2018) and others. During the Paris tour of 2010, they acted on the stage of the Odeon Theater.

At age 20 she made her debut in film. After years Sergei Loznitsa invited her to his film based on Dostoevsky in 2016 and gave her the leading part. That was A Gentle Creature.

"Vasilina Makovtseva’s performance of quiet despair and passivity is resourceful enough as to warrant, I think, a BEST ACTRESS prize."

"I might be wrong, but I don’t think Makovsteva smiles once throughout the film, and her expressions often somehow seem older than the face they’re stretched across. Her work is muted and morose, but also nuanced and riveting, and there’s an exactness to her slow build of despair as she realises she may be snagged in a trap from which there’s no escape. What destroys you is she presses on."