His parents met in Tula, Russia, the native town of his father, but divorced five years after Yuri's birth.

After school he considered becoming an Orthodox priest,[4] but then decided to follow in his mother's footsteps and entered screenwriting courses at VGIK led by Nikolai Figurovsky which he finished in 1980.

Despite Andrei Tarkovsky's approval, it was called "a propaganda of Russian idealism" and banned for nine years, released only in 1987.

[6] He also received Nika Awards for both The Sun and Faust, as well as A Room and a Half — a semi-biographical film about Joseph Brodsky directed and co-written by Andrei Khrzhanovsky in 2009.

[7][8] Arabov was the author of several novels, including Big-Beat (2003), Wonder (2009), Orlean (2011) and A Butterfly Encounter (2014), as well as a number of poetry books.