Nikolai Nikolaevich Figurovsky (Russian: Николай Николаевич Фигуровский; 7 December 1923 – 14 June 2003) was a Soviet film director, screenwriter, writer and professor at VGIK.
[3][4] His brother Yuri Figurovsky (1925—2005), a constructor of radiolocation equipment, served as the head of the Tikhomirov Scientific Research Institute of Instrument Design between 1962 and 1969, while his cousin-uncle Nikolai Alexandrovich Figurovsky (1901—1986) was a prominent Soviet chemist and a professor at the MSU Faculty of Chemistry; he also had family ties with the Russian space scientist Anatoli Blagonravov.
Among his famous works were two movies directed by Lev Kulidzhanov: the 1961 drama When the Trees Were Tall which entered the 1962 Cannes Film Festival and Crime and Punishment (1970) based on the novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky which was selected for the 31st Venice International Film Festival and awarded the Vasilyev Brothers State Prize of the RSFSR in 1971.
[7][8] For the latter Figurovsky also proposed an idea of an extended six- or seven-part TV version to be released simultaneously, but this was too ahead of its time.
[9] He directed another two notable movies at Belarusfilm: the 1954 spy film Children of the Partisan which became the first Belarusian color motion picture and the 1958 war drama The Clock Has Stopped at Midnight (1958) which turned into one of the Soviet box office leaders of 1959 (8th place with 34.8 mln viewers).