Pavel Viktorovich Kostomarov (Russian: Па́вел Ви́кторович Костома́ров; born November 22, 1975, Moscow) is a Russian cinematographer, feature, documentary and TV director. Winner of the Laurel Award (2004 and 2007), the White Elephant Award (2007), the Silver Bear Prize for Outstanding Artistic Achievements at the Berlin International Film Festival (2010), the Golden Eagle Award (2011).
In 1991, Pavel graduated from the biology class at school No. 523 in Moscow. After graduating from school, he first studied to be an ichthyologist, but his love for photography led him to the VGIK camera department, which he graduated from in 2002. While still a student , he began working with director Sergei Loznitsa on documentaries: "Way Station" (2000), "Settlement" (2001), "Portrait" (2002). Soon, at one of the European film festivals, I met Antoine Cattin, a Swiss cinematographer, director and future co-author. In 2003, on the set of "Landscape" with Loznitsa, a case brought a talkative trucker Valera to the same hotel in Okulovka. It was Kattin who insisted on making a Transformer movie out of it later. The union continued with the documentaries "Peaceful Life" (2004), "Mother" (2007), which received many festival awards (in Anapa, Yekaterinburg, Moscow; in Argentina, Poland, Finland) and awards — "Laurel", "White Elephant". For ten years, Antoine Kattin and Pavel Kostomarov filmed director Alexei German during his work on the "History of the Arkanar Massacre", which resulted in the film "Playback" in 2012. In collaboration with documentary filmmaker Alexander Rastorguev in Rostov-on-Don, he made documentaries "I love you" (2010) and "I don't love you" (2012). Together with NTV presenter Alexey Pivovarov and documentarian Alexander Rastorguev, he created the Internet project "Term" in 2012. In December 2012, together with NTV host Alexey Pivovarov and Alexander Rastorguev, he launched a large-scale documentary project "Reality"[10]. Together with them and other co-authors: Antoine Kattin, Susanna Barangieva and Dmitry Kubasov, Pavel Kostomarov conducted casting and looked for potential heroes of the project.
In addition to documentaries, Pavel continued to make feature films with Alexey Popogrebsky ("Simple Things", "How I spent this summer"), with Boris Khlebnikov (the short story "The Saving Tunnel" from the movie almanac "There is no hurry", "Until the Night Separates", "A Long Happy Life").
Shortly after February 24, 2022, he left Russia. He lives in Argentina.
