Konstantin Fam

Konstantin Fam aka Costa Fam (rus. Константи́н Фа́м, born 13 July 1972, Pervomayskiy, USSR) is a Ukrainian-born independent director, producer, and screenwriter.

After military conflict outbreak in Georgia in 1991, he moved to Chernihiv in Ukraine, where he worked as an actor in a local theater.

However, he was typically offered roles that in accordance with his Asian appearance, which didn't match his ambitions.

In 1992, he moved to Moscow and started working on television projects.

In 1997, Fam entered Russian State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK), the Course of Screenwriting headed by the great Valentin Yezhov.

After two years studying he decided to leave it and concentrate on business development.

He started studying film equipment rental, as well as filming TV commercials, advertisements, music videos and image movies.

In 1998, he was a writer of children's comic film magazine "Yeralash", as well as a director.

In the 2000s ran a large cinemachinery leasing business also shooting television commercials.

During this period, Constantine acted in various production roles, ranging from small roles to producing and directing.

The company was closed due to 2008 crisis.

Constantine had a dream to earn the necessary amount of money, to shoot a comedy based on his own scenario and start working on his own projects.

From the sixteen, Costa has been forming the list of projects he would like to implement.

In 2008, he became the second director and screenwriter of the comedy club, Women's League, having worked for two seasons.

After this, Konstantin acted as a director of 10 episodes sketch show "Caution: Children!"

His love to the sketches Konstantin refers to the manifestation of his national identity.

Willing to develop himself as a filmmaker, he entered the NYFA, took all of the film production courses.

Education ended with 13-week production period, during which a short film based on the story of Grigori Gorin was shot.

In the center of the story there is a boy, who changed a winning lottery ticket on the Hedgehog.

Boy's father was trying to return the ticket by all means.

The story gained the festival success, and then has been invited to many showings.

It won the Grand Prix Festival in São Paulo in Brazil.

The movie was taken to the Short Film Corner program in Cannes.

"Witnesses" is the first feature film in former Soviet Union produced in memory of the Holocaust victims.

Witnesses is the historical drama that consists of three short films Shoes, Brutus and Violin united by the idea to be produced in memory of the greatest tragedy of the 20th century.

The project is being elaborated in the memory of the perished people because there is hardly a single Jewish family that didn't lose their loved ones on the run of the mass destruction in the 20th-century catastrophe.

The key purpose of the project is to spread the knowledge about the history and to remind the young generation of the tragedy in order to prevent it in the future.

His film "Shoes", a tribute to the memory of Holocaust victims, was the only Russian short movie nominated for the Academy Awards in 2013.

Konstantin Fam was born in the town of Pervomayskiy in Kharkiv oblast in Ukrainian SSR.

His father, Nguen (Pham) Kong Tak, a Vietnamese veteran of guerilla wars, was sent to study in the Soviet Union personally by Vietnam's leader Ho Chi Minh.

Members of the father's family participated in the First Indochina War.

After he sought political asylum in the Soviet Union, he was not allowed to live in big cities and the family was under the constant KGB supervision.

Fam's mother, Svetlana Naumovna Malkina, was Jewish.

The majority of her relatives perished in the Holocaust, and she has been hiding her Jewishness throughout her whole life.

His parents' stories influenced Konstantin's creative world outlook.

Konstantin lived in the town of Pervomayskiy until the age of 15 and then entered the Dnipropetrovsk State Theatre School for the Puppetry Arts.

Initially, he wished to be in acting classes as puppetry was considered to be a less prestigious theatre form.

However, Fam admitted years later that his specialty provided him with the extensive experience in the construction of music, staging, as well as in the ability to animate inanimate objects.

Subsequently, this experience was useful when shooting "Shoes".

After graduation, Fam moved to Tbilisi to work in a theater.