Timur Bekmambetov
Timur Nuruakhitovich Bekmambetov (born 25 June 1961) is a Kazakh-Russian filmmaker and tech entrepreneur. He is best known for the fantasy epic Night Watch (2004), the action thriller Wanted (2008), and the historical horror film Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012), as well as for the screenlife films Unfriended (2015), Searching (2018), Profile (2018), and War of the Worlds (2025).
Also recorded as Timur Nurbakhitovich Bekmambetov
Timur Bekmambetov

Gage Skidmore · CC BY-SA 3.0
- Full name
- Темір Нұрбақытұлы Бекмамбетов.
- Born
- 1961. · Atyrau.
- Nationality
- Soviet Union, Kazakhstan and Russia.
- Occupation
- film producer, screenwriter, writer, theatrical producer, director and impresario.
- Education
- Top Courses for Scriptwriters and Film Directors and Uzbekistan State Institute of Arts and Culture.
- Honours
- Order of Friendship.
- Languages
- Russian.
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Timur Nuruakhitovich Bekmambetov (born 25 June 1961) is a Kazakh-Russian filmmaker and tech entrepreneur. He is best known for the fantasy epic Night Watch (2004), the action thriller Wanted (2008), and the historical horror film Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012), as well as for the screenlife films Unfriended (2015), Searching (2018), Profile (2018), and War of the Worlds (2025).
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Timur Bekmambetov (born 1961) is a director, film producer and impresario, among other activities, a national of Kazakhstan and Russia. The director was born Темір Нұрбақытұлы Бекмамбетов in Atyrau.
Timur Bekmambetov was educated at Top Courses for Scriptwriters and Film Directors and Uzbekistan State Institute of Arts and Culture. The director worked for Ilkhom Theatre and Uzbekfilm.
Languages used include Russian. Honours include Order of Friendship.
Composed from admitted, traceable facts · 26 September 2026
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wikidata · Q344854 · wikipedia · Timur Bekmambetov
In this article
Early life
Early life
Bekmambetov was born on 25 June 1961 in the city of Atyrau, Kazakhstan (then part of the Soviet Union), formerly known as Guriev.
Education
Education
After graduation from school, Bekmambetov entered the Moscow Power Engineering Institute in 1979 and left it in 1980, on the eve of the 1980 Summer Olympics. He was deported from Moscow on the grounds of being "unreliable" and moved to Tashkent, Uzbek SSR, to study at the Alexander Ostrovsky Theatrical and Artistic Institute, from which he graduated in 1987 with a degree in theater and cinema set design.
Film and television career
Film and television career
Bekmambetov started his career in the late 1980s as a production designer at the Ilkhom Theatre in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and at Uzbek national film studio Uzbekfilm. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Bekmambetov moved from Uzbekistan to Moscow, where he started making commercials for the Russian market. His commercial series World History, retelling life episodes of the world's prominent rulers (from Nero and Tamerlan to Napoleon and the last Russian emperor Nicholas), is still considered the best video advertising in Russia. In 1994, he founded Bazelevs, an advertising and film production company, in Russia. Its advertising division continues making commercials for major Russian and international brands; in 2021, its commercial featuring Apple's new iPhone in the Hermitage Museum interiors was nominated for the Cannes Lions festival. Bekmambetov's directorial debut was Peshavar Waltz (1994) depicting the war fought by the USSR in Afghanistan. The film was dubbed in English as Escape from Afghanistan and released direct-to-video by Roger Corman in 2002. In 1998, Corman invited Bekmambetov to direct his production of The Arena (2001) starring Karen McDougal and Lisa Dergan. A remake of the 1974 gladiator exploitation film of the same name, it marked Bekmambetov's English-language debut. In 2004, Bekmambetov wrote and directed Night Watch (2004), a Russian fantasy film based on the book by Sergey Lukyanenko. The film was the first Russian production which, after the demise of the Soviet Union, managed to top the domestic box office, making $16.7 million in Russia alone, thus overtaking The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. The sequel to Night Watch, Day Watch (2006), was likewise written and directed by Bekmambetov and set a new record for the Russian domestic box office, having grossed more than $26 million in the first two weeks. The Russian blockbuster epic attracted the attention of Fox Searchlight Pictures, which paid $4 million to acquire the worldwide distribution rights (excluding Russia and the Baltic states). In 2010, Night Watch was named among the 100 Best Films of World Cinema by Empire. The film also received positive reactions from American directors Quentin Tarantino and James Gunn. Bekmambetov's Hollywood directorial debut was Universal's action thriller Wanted (2008), an adaptation of the graphic novel series created by Mark Millar and J. G. Jones. Starring Angelina Jolie, James McAvoy and Morgan Freeman, the action film grossed $341 million worldwide, and became Universal's highest grossing R-rated film, as well as earning two Oscar nominations. In 2009, alongside Tim Burton and Jim Lemley, Bekmambetov produced an animated film titled 9 (2009), the story of a rag doll in a post-apocalyptic world, directed by Shane Acker. In 2011, Bekmambetov produced the science fiction thriller Apollo 18, together with The Weinstein Company, and the science fiction film The Darkest Hour set in Moscow and produced by New Regency. In 2012, Bekmambetov directed and produced the live-action adaptation of Seth Grahame-Smith's novel – Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, together with Tim Burton and Jim Lemley. He was awarded the 2012 International Filmmaker of the Year award by the National Association of Theatre Owners. In 2013, Variety (Russian Edition) named Bekmambetov one of the most commercially successful Russian directors of the decade. In 2016, Bekmambetov directed Ben-Hur, the fifth film adaptation of the novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ by Lew Wallace. At the same time, he produced the action film Hardcore Henry, directed by Ilya Naishuller, using the perspective of a first-person shooter. In 2017, Bekmambetov produced the historical drama The Current War starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Holland, Nicholas Hoult and Michael Shannon. The film was inspired by the 19th-century war of currents between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse. In 2021, Bekmambetov directed the WW2 action film V2. Escape from Hell, with its aircraft battle scenes using the War Thunder game engine. The film was released in Russia both theatrically as a feature and on a streaming platform as a smartphone-only vertical series. In 2021, Deadline announced that Bekmambetov would be bringing to the screen a new universe based on the unexploited works in the horror genre by the Marvel Сomics creator Stan Lee. In December 2022, Bekmambetov sold the Bazelevs film studio in Russia to its general producer, Lala Rustamova, and commercial director, Timur Asadov. Bekmambetov has completely retired from the Russian business, but the studio will continue to cooperate with him as a filmmaker and screenwriter. In 2024, he signed to Artist International Group.
Personal life
Personal life
Bekmambetov owns the former Walt Disney mansion in Los Angeles. Bekmambetov is married to Russian urbanist Natalia Fishman-Bekmambetova, who worked on the restoration of Gorky Park in Moscow and the renovation of the city of Kazan.
Political views
Political views
In a 2007 editorial about Day Watch in The Guardian, Bekmambetov compared president Vladimir Putin to the film's "light ones," saying "[Light and dark] doesn't mean good and bad. Dark means freedom and light means responsibility — and, in real life, Putin, for sure, is a light one. He is trying to fix everything, make everything organised somehow. But it's very bad for freedom." In 2022, Bekmambetov condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and called the boycott of Russian films in the West "emotional, sincere and reasonable."
Producer only
Producer only
9 (2009) Black Lightning (2009) Lucky Trouble (2011) Apollo 18 (2011) The Darkest Hour (2011) KikoRiki: Team Invincible (2011) The Snow Queen (2012) Yolki 3 (2013) Alisa Knows What to Do! (2013) Gorko! (2013) Hardcore Henry (2015) The Snow Queen 2: The Snow King (2015) Unfriended (2015) Paws, Bones & Rock'n'roll (2015) Hack the Bloggers (2016) Yolki 6 (2017) The Age of Pioneers (2017) He's a Dragon (2017) The Current War (2017) Searching (2018) Unfriended: Dark Web (2018) Persian Lessons (2020) R#J (2021) Missing (2023) (executive producer) CTRL (2024) (executive producer) War of the Worlds (2025) LifeHack (2025)
Music videos
Music videos
Yulia Chicherina – "Tu-lu-la" Yulia Chicherina – "Zhara" Linkin Park – "Powerless"

Timur Bekmambetov and Benjamin Walker speaking at the 2012 WonderCon in Anaheim, California. Please attribute to Gage Skidmore if used elsewhere.
Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America · Timur Bekmambetov Benjamin Walker Uploaded by maybeMaybeMaybe

Timur Bekmambetov speaking at the 2012 WonderCon in Anaheim, California. Please attribute to Gage Skidmore if used elsewhere.
Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America · Timur Bekmambetov Uploaded by maybeMaybeMaybe
Screenlife filmmaking
Bekmambetov is the pioneer of the screenlife filmmaking movement, thus responding to people's life migrating to the digital world of mobile gadgets. In a screenlife film, viewers see the action play out from the POV of the computers, tablets or smartphones used by the characters. In 2015, Bekmambetov's debut screenlife production, the teen horror Unfriended, was picked up by Universal, grossing $65 million worldwide with a budget of $1 million; three years later, a sequel, Unfriended: Dark Web, appeared. Bekmambetov followed that up with the 2018 thriller led by John Cho, Searching, grossing more than $75 million worldwide. In 2019, he produced the ten-episode series Dead of Night for Snapchat, with the story revolving around a viral outbreak that turns people into zombies. It scored over 16 million viewers in the first releasing month, and got extended for the second season. In 2020, Universal and Bekmambetov signed a deal to partner on five Hollywood features to be made in the screenlife format in various genres. In 2021, Focus Features released Profile, Bekmambetov's first directorial feature in the screenlife format, where a reporter goes online to catch a Jihadi recruiter to get a story on why and how European women join ISIS. Inspired by the 2015 nonfiction bestseller In the Skin of a Jihadist by a French journalist Anna Erelle, Profile won the 2018 Audience Award by Berlin Film Festival. Bekmambetov's recent screenlife production, R#J, a Gen Z adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, premiered at Sundance 2021 and won a special prize at SXSW. The invention of the screenlife filmmaking technique brought Bekmambetov's Bazelevs a spot among Fast Company's 2021 World's Most Innovative Companies.
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Peter Rollberg. Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Cinema. Rowman & Littlefield. 99–100. 2016. 978-1442268425.
- 2.Бекмамбетов Тимур Нуруахитович. Versia. 25 January 2015.
- 3.Кочевник по натуре: Тимур Бекмамбетов между поисками нового и модернизацией старого. Искусство кино.
- 4.Реклама как объект практической эстетики Электронный научный журнал "Медиаскоп". www.mediascope.ru.
- 5.Timur Bekmambetov Biography – Yahoo! Movies. Movies.yahoo.com. Retrieved on 2013-08-25.
- 6."Дневной дозор" собрал 26 млн. долларов. ВЗГЛЯД.РУ.
- 7.Can 'Dusk' follow 'Night'? Fox claims to have snared a Russian Peter Jackson. January 2005.
- 8.20th Century Fox to Distribute 'Night Watch' and 'Day Watch' from Russia's Channel One — ORT. Business Wire. August 24, 2004.
- 9."Ночной дозор" стал худшим из лучших неанглоязычных фильмов. Lenta.RU.
- 10.TIMUR BEKMAMBETOV TO RECEIVE CINEMACON® INTERNATIONAL FILMMAKER OF THE YEAR AWARD2012. March 2018.
- 11.Timur Bekmambetov: Dusk Watch on Hold. beyondhollywood.com.
- 12.Бремя первых. Как Тимур Бекмамбетов стал самым коммерчески успешным продюсером. Forbes.ru. 5 June 2017.
- 13.Timur Bekmambetov Behind Secret New Sci-Fi Project 'Apollo 18'. FirstShowing.net (2010-11-06). Retrieved on 2013-08-25.
- 14.UFOs Attack Russia in The Darkest Hour. DreadCentral. 5 March 2010.
- 15.Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov team to bring us Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. DreadCentral. 3 March 2010.
- 16.Nikolay Larionov. Top-15 Commercially Successful Russian Directors. Variety.
- 17.Peter Debruge. Is 'Ben-Hur' a Dark Horse in the Chariot Race for Global Audiences?. Variety. 10 August 2016.
- 18.Бекмамбетов продал российскую часть своей киностудии. tass.ru. 2022-12-22.
- 19.Fleming, Mike Jr. Timur Bekmambetov Signs With Artist International Group. Deadline. 2024-11-22.
- 20.Триллер "Убрать из друзей" попал в ряды самых прибыльных малобюджетных проектов в мире. ФильмПРО.
- 21."Поиск": Тимур Бекмамбетов спродюсировал еще один фильм, действие которого разворачивается на экране компьютера И убедил Голливуд, что это серьезный жанр. Meduza.
- 22.Фильм Тимура Бекмамбетова наградили на фестивале South by Southwest. www.kinometro.ru.
- 23.Михаил Зыгарь и Тимур Бекмамбетов запустили сериал для смартфонов про 1968 год. Журнал Esquire.
- 24.Тимур Бекмамбетов представил свой новый фильм на Берлинале-2018. Вокруг.ТВ.
- 25.Проект "Ромео и Джульетта" Бекмамбетова получил спецприз фестиваля SXSW. РИА Новости. 2021-03-22.
- 26.Jason Rothenberg. Executive Suite: Inside Timur Bekmambetov's Bazelevs Office. The Hollywood Reporter. 4 August 2016.
- 27.Christina Radish. 10 Things to Know About Walt Disney's Beloved Home at Woking Way; Plus Over 20 Images of the House Today. Collider. 29 September 2014.
- 28.Emanuel Levy. Ben-Hur: Director Timur Bekmambetov.
- 29.Phil Hoad. The Russians are coming!. The Guardian. 21 September 2007.
- 30.Tom Grater. Russian-Kazakh Filmmaker Timur Bekmambetov Condemns Ukraine Invasion, Sets Documentary 'DWW1' About Digital Side Of The War. Deadline. 10 March 2022.
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