Svetlana Ivanova
Svetlana Ivanova is an actor, born 1985.
A war film gave Ivanova her start and has never quite let go of her. She played Olya in 9th Company, the 2005 picture about Soviet conscripts in Afghanistan, and it remains the credit that introduces her to anyone outside Russia. The role she was actually decorated for came next, Polina in Franz + Polina, which is not among the credits listed here.
Since then she has worked steadily across Russian film and television without settling into a lane. There is the war drama August. Eighth, the fantasy Dark World, the horror picture Row 19, the science-fiction spectacle Cosmoball, and The Blackout, which appears both as a film and as a series. Television is where the volume is: Investigator Tikhonov, Trigger, Mutual Consent, Pregnancy Test, Zhurov, Shuttles.
Very little of it is exported, which is the ordinary fate of a Russian screen career and the reason a substantial filmography can look thin from the outside. Judged on what does reach subtitles, she is a better actress than the genre pictures she keeps landing in require her to be.
Movies (7)
TV (8)
Where to start with Svetlana Ivanova
9th Company remains the calling card and the right place to begin, a big and brutal war film that is far better made than its politics are examined. It is the title her name is still attached to twenty years on.
August. Eighth is the more demanding performance and asks more of her than anything else here. The Blackout is the fun one, Russian science fiction with more ambition than budget, and the series version The Blackout gives the same story considerably more room. Row 19 is a nasty little horror piece and Dark World is the fantasy that has dated hardest. For television, Investigator Tikhonov is the most watchable, a detective series with a real sense of place.