[5] Naumov, son of cinematographer Naum Naumov-Strazh, studied with Igor Savchenko at the VGIK in 1947–1951 and worked as one of his assistants on the biopic Taras Shevchenko (1951), which he completed with fellow student Aleksandr Alov after Savchenko's sudden death.

That film and Ten Years without Permission to Correspond (1990) deal with the country's Stalinist past.

The script for the 1994 drama White Feast, starring Innokenty Smoktunovsky in his last role, was a collaboration between Naumov and prominent Italian screenwriter Tonino Guerra.

Another project with Guerra, Nardo's Secret (1997/99), was troubled by never-ending financial difficulties and passed several stages before finally being released in 2001 as Clock without Hands.

Like Naumov's other films of the 1990s, it suffered severely from Russia's cinema industry crisis and was seen by few people.