Dimitri Kirsanoff (Russian: Димитрий Кирсанов, né Markus David Sussmanovitch Kaplan, Маркус Давид Зусманович Каплан;[1] 6 March 1899 – 11 February 1957) was a Russian-French early film-maker working in France, sometimes considered part of the French Impressionist movement in film.
[3][4] As his interest in cinema grew, he met an aspiring young actress called Germaine Lebas, from Brittany, and she, under the new name of Nadia Sibirskaïa, became his partner and collaborator in his films throughout the 1920s.
[4] By his own admission, he knew little of film technique when he began, and he had no contact with the French avant-garde or with other Russian émigré film-makers in France, many of whom were linked to the Albatros production company.
[5](p26) In Ménilmontant, he created a poetic portrait of the working-class district of Paris using visual devices such as superimpositions, recurring images, dissolves, and unexpected juxtapositions, while the melodramatic narrative, about two sisters orphaned after the murder of their parents, was sketched elliptically and with uncertain chronology.
[5](pp53–59)[3] For the remainder of his career Kirsanoff's work alternated between miscellaneous commercial features and documentaries, with occasional short films of a more personal character which were financed by his own company (such as Arrière-saison and La Mort du cerf).