Vadim Klavdievich Derbenyov was born on June 18, 1934 in Yaroslavl. He graduated from the cameramen faculty of VGIK (All-Union Institute of Cinematography) in 1957. He worked as a cameraman at the Moldova-film studio, where he shot the films Ataman Kodr (1958, the first prize at the All-Union Film Festival in Kiev-59), A Lullaby (1960), Man Walks after the Sun (1961), etc. From 1963 he was the director of the Moldova-film studio and the director of the Mosfilm studio from 1969. He is the honored worker of arts of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (1962) and the National Actor of the Russian Federation (1994).