[2] He was assigned as assistant to Yakov Protazanov in 1925[3] and made his directorial debut in 1927 with The Circle,[2] first drawing attention the following year with Penal Servitude.

[3] He joined Mosfilm[3] in 1931 and in 1937 he won his first Stalin Prize for The Last Night, which was also his first collaboration with the writer Yevgeny Gabrilovich with whom he worked for the next 40 years.

He made a couple of war documentaries, Fall of Berlin – 1945 and Towards an Armistice with Finland,[2] both of which won the Stalin Prize.

Cavalier of the Golden Star, also known as Dream of a Cossack, won the top prize at the 1951 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival[2] and also competed for the Grand Prix at the 1951 Cannes Film Festival.

The Communist marked the fortieth anniversary of the October Revolution and a follow-up, Your Contemporary, appeared in 1968.