He has been nominated and won numerous international prizes in Russia, Europe and the United States, including the Venice Film Festival.
Steven Spielberg invited Pavel Chukhray to participate in his project: “Broken Silence” (2002), an international documentary mini-series about the Holocaust.
The series consists of five foreign-language films featuring testimonies from Argentina, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Russia and directed by distinguished filmmakers from each of these countries.
Pavel Chukhray directed the segment "Children from the Abyss," detailing the experience of Holocaust survivors and their resistance, betrayal, rescue, and the desire for revenge in this Russian-language documentary.
In 2007, Chukhray adapted a novel by Nikolai Gogol to film, resulting in a production called The Russian Game, about an Italian card sharper who is hounded by creditors and travels to Russia to hustle some quick money.
He grew up surrounded by family friends who were talented film makers, including Mark Donskoy, and the young and not yet well-known Sergei Parajanov, Aleksandr Alov, and Vladimir Naumov.