Of his earlier films, The Hearse (Katafalk) won the Grand Prix at Mannheim (1990) and Love (Lyubov) received Ecumenical Prize at Cannes (1992),[1] and won awards at Sozvezdie, Chicago, Geneva and Montpellier Film Festivals.

[2] Todorovsky made a name for himself with the crime melodrama set in Moscow, The Country of Deaf (Strana Glukhikh), scripted by actress-director-scriptwriter Renata Litvinova based on her own novella To Have and to Belong.

The serial is a melodrama about life in the Soviet Union during the early years of Nikita Khrushchev's era.

In 2022, The Russian streaming service More.tv showed the drama In two, directed by Todorovsky, and starring Alexander Petrov, Danila Kozlovsky and Irina Starshenbaum.

Valery Todorovsky was married to actress Evgeniya Brik, with whom he had a daughter, born in 2009 in Los Angeles.