Short answers, pulled from the story.
Vladimir Motyl was a Soviet and Russian film director and screenwriter born on the 26th of June 1927 in Lepiel, Belarus. He is best known for directing White Sun of the Desert (1969), one of the most popular Soviet cult films, a genre known as the Ostern or Red Western.
Motyl's father, a Polish emigre, was arrested in 1930 and sent to the Solovki prison camp, where he died the following year. Motyl and his mother were subsequently exiled to the Northern Urals.
Motyl fell into official disfavor after his 1967 film Zhenya, Zhenechka and Katyusha was judged by Soviet agitprop officials to be disrespectful in its treatment of the Second World War theme. Despite this censure, he was still invited to direct White Sun of the Desert shortly afterward.
Motyl received the Order of Honour for White Sun of the Desert in 1996 and the State Prize of the Russian Federation in the category of Literature and Arts for the year 1997, awarded in 1998. He was also granted the honorary title of People's Artist of the Russian Federation in 2003.
Vladimir Motyl died on the 21st of February 2010 at approximately eleven in the evening, at the age of 83. He had been hospitalized at city clinical hospital No. 67 on the 5th of February after feeling ill at home alone; doctors found a fracture of the cervical vertebrae and pneumonia.
Before directing films, Motyl trained at the Sverdlovsk Theatrical Institute and worked in various theatres across the Urals and Siberia for about ten years. He eventually became chief director of Sverdlovsk Young Spectator's Theatre before deciding to move into cinema without any technical film qualifications.