During the Great Patriotic War Yury Korotkov took part in guerrilla movement and perished. After the war Kira with her mother Natalia Korotkova-Skurt settled down in Bucharest, where her mother worked in the Ministry of Culture, and at one time was even the Minister of Culture of Romania. 

 

Kira studied philology in the Moscow State University, and in 1959 graduated from the Film Director's Faculty of the VGIK (the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography), where she studied under Sergey Gerasimov and Tamara Makarova.

 

In 1961 Kira Muratova became a film director at the Odessa Film Studio. She made her debut as a screenwriter and director in 1962, when she created the short-length film By the Step Ravine jointly with her future husband Alexander Igorevich Muratov. Two years later they co-created the full-length movie Our Honest Bread. With first movies Brief Encounters and The Long Farewell the director already declared her interest in the modern ethics issues and ambiguous human characters. After some scandals with the management of the Odessa Film Studio she had to move from Odessa to Leningrad, where the film Getting to Know the Big, Wide World was released at Lenfilm Studio in 1978. Then she got acquainted with the artist Evgeny Golubenko, who became her second husband and the coauthor of scenarios. Among her most remarkable works are A Change of Fate and The Asthenic Syndrome, which attracted great attention of critics and society. The latter film was awarded the Jury’s Special Prize - Silver Bear - at the 40th Berlin Film Festival (1990) and Nika Prize as the best fiction film (1991).

 

Outstanding celebs, such as Vladimir Vysotsky, George Deliyev, Zynaida Sharko, Nina Ruslanova, and Renata Litvinova appeared in Kira Muratova's movies. The film director cooperated with the composers Oleg Karavaychuk and Valentin Silvestrov.