Dinara Kuldashevna Asanova (Russian: Динара Кулдашевна Асанова; 24 October 1942 – 4 April 1985) was a Kyrgyzstani-Soviet film director and one of the most notable and acclaimed female filmmakers of the late Soviet Union.

After graduating high school in 1959, Asanova began her film career as an assistant director, cutter and actress at the Kyrgyzfilm studio from 1960-1962.

[4] Asanova then began studying at the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography or VGIK, a Soviet state film school in Moscow.

At the studio, Asanova made her first feature film The Woodpecker Doesn’t Get Headaches (1975) which helped establish her position in Soviet Cinema.

[6] Woodpeckers Don't Get Headaches (Ne bolit golova u dyatla) was Dinara Asanova’s first feature film.

It was the first film she made when she began working at Lenfilm Studio in Leningrad and it resulted in her gaining a name for herself in Soviet Cinema.

[1] The Woodpecker Doesn’t Get Headaches depicts a young aspiring drummer who falls in love with a girl during a summer holiday.

It was made near the end of her career while she worked at Lenfilm Studio and continued the trend of troubled adolescence as the main subject of Asanova’s films.

Her most notable films such as Rudolfio, The Woodpecker Doesn’t Get Headaches and Tough Kids deal with troubled adolescence and the difficult shift from childhood to adulthood.

She incorporated realism within her work to contribute to her films’ narratives which often focused on the individual and a realistic portrayal of common life.

It was a period of change from Stalin’s cultural politics and strict censorship to allowing writers, artists and filmmakers to criticize Soviet social problems and focus on individual experiences rather than only the collective.

She was rewarded with the USSR State Prize for her work on Tough Kids and was named Merited Artist of The Russian Federation in 1980, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.