Lado Okhotnikov

Lado Okhotnikov was born in Kazakhstan and grew up in Tatarstan. During his childhood and teenage years, he was a competitive Greco-Roman wrestler, training under the guidance of his father, who was also his coach. He competed in and won numerous regional wrestling championships. In 2001, Lado graduated from the Directing Faculty of VIPPKRK, a branch of VGIK (the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography), with a degree in film directing. While still a student, he began staging productions and launched his first entrepreneurial ventures. He spent many years as an entrepreneur before returning to the film industry. In 2024, he founded Lado Film, a film production company developing the animated feature film The Call of Lumara. Lado co-wrote the screenplay for The Portal of Force and portrayed Master Dao, one of the film’s central characters. The film had its official premiere in Berlin in 2026, alongside the 76th Berlin International Film Festival.