In half a year he managed to make another successful prison break and returned to Ekaterina who had already given a birth to their child – a girl they named Tamara.

By the time Vladimir was released, her family had moved to North Ossetia because of the famine and poor living conditions.

Ironically, it was a biographical film about Kosta Khetagurov, the national poet of the Ossetian people, thus he worked in North Ossetia for several months without even realizing that his beloved and their daughter were also living there.

He even contacted Jacques Cousteau who agreed to help, but the studio refused to give foreign currency to pay for what they considered a kids movie.

Vladimir and the cinematographer Eduard Rozovsky spent a year scuba diving under the guidance of the best Soviet divers, spending 260 and 400 hours (respectfully) under the water.

While Gennadi Kazansky is listed as a co-director, Chebotaryov claimed that he had little to nothing to do with film production, he could not even swim and was sent to look after Vladimir by the heads of the studio after a scandal during the shooting of Don Quixote where he served as an assistant director.

In 1985 he co-directed one of the last war epics of the Soviet Union – The Battalions Request Fire TV mini-series based on the novel of the same name by Yuri Bondarev.

[5] He was buried at the Vostryakovskoe cemetery besides his wife Ada Sergeevna Duchavina, a costume designer at Mosfilm and a former top-model.