Akan Satayev

Satayev was born to a family of actors, both his parents were recognized as People's Artistes of the Kazakh SSR and performed leading roles at Karaganda Drama Theater where he spent a lot of time. That theater became his first drama school, and in 1994 Satayev graduated from Kazakh National Academy of Arts, Department of Cinema and Television.^[3]

While at university, Satayev played student Azat, the main character in Allazhar, a movie by Kaldybay Abenov about tragic events in Alma-Ata in December 1986. After graduation, Satayev took part in various feature films and went into directing and producing advertising clips. Sataifilm, the company he founded in 2003, presented Racketeer, a crime drama and his debut movie, in 2007.^[4]

In 2016 Satayev founded the Astana Film Fund to support young Kazakh directors and low-budget indie productions en masse.^[5] In the same year he shot 2 feature-length movies, Districts,^[6] a teenage crime drama set in the USSR, and The Road to Mother, a period drama about the Soviet collectivization period, the Eastern Front, and the Kazakh post-war years.^[7]

Satayev led Kazakhfilm, the largest movie studio in Kazakhstan from 2020 to 2022.^[8][9]

• Honored Worker of Kazakhstan title conferred by a Presidential decree^[26]
• Laureate of the State Award of the Republic of Kazakhstan for Literature and Arts^[27]