Tigran Keosayan

Tigran Edmondovich Keosayan (Armenian: Տիգրան էդմոնդի Քեոսայան, Russian: Тигран Эдмондович Кеосаян; born 4 January 1966) is a Russian film director, actor and television presenter. He is a winner of film festival prizes including TEFI, Kinotavr and Window to Europe Film Festival [ru] 2001.^[1]

Tigran Keosayan
Тигран Кеосаян
Tigran Keosayan in 2009
Born	Tigran Edmondovich Keosayan (1966-01-04) 4 January 1966 (age 59) Moscow, RSFSR, USSR
Occupation(s)	Director, writer, actor
Years active	1992–present
Spouses	Alyona Khmelnitskaya ​ ​ (m. 1993; div. 2014)​ Margarita Simonyan ​ ​ (m. 2022)​
Children	5

Described^{[by whom?]} as a pro-Kremlin television presenter, the European Union, United Kingdom and Armenia^[2] imposed sanctions on Keosayan as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Biography

Keosayan with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Tatyana Mitkova, October 2018

Keosayan is the son of Armenian-Russian film director and composer Edmond Keosayan and actress Laura Gevorkyan. He studied at the all-Union (now all-Russian) state Institute of Cinematography (VGIK).

Keosayan is the director of Russian films including Katyka and Shiz (1992), Poor Sasha (1997), Lily of the Valley Silvery (2005), Hare Over the Abyss (2006), The Twelve Chairs musical (2003), a large number of clips for Mikhail Shufutinsky, Igor Sarukhanov, and Irina Allegrova. He is co-operated with Fyodor Bondarchuk, Alexander Zbruev and others.

Keosayan is an anchorman of the daily (from Monday to Thursday) analytical talk show With Tigran Keosayan on the Russian private TV channel REN-TV.^[3]

Personal life

Keosayan is married to Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of the Russian state-controlled broadcaster RT,^[4][5][6] as well as the state-owned media group Rossiya Segodnya.^[7]

Keosayan suffers from a long-standing heart condition and suffered heart attacks in 2008 and 2010. In January 2025, Margarita Simonyan said that Keosayan temporarily underwent clinical death and is in a coma.^[8]

Sanctions

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Keosayan was one of the individuals sanctioned by the European Union.^[9][10] The reasons given for the sanctions were that Keosayan has spread anti-Ukrainian propaganda.^[11]

Keosayan was included in the list of Russians under personal sanctions by the United Kingdom in March 2022.^[12]

On 24 June 2022, Kazakhstan reported that Keosayan was denied entry. On 10 October, Armenian authorities declared Keosayan and his wife Margarita Simonyan persona non grata as a "agents from different countries with Armenian surnames" who allow themselves a disrespectful attitude towards Armenia.^[2]

Controversy

Blackface segment about Barack Obama

On 30 November 2020, Keosayan's TV show "International Sawmill", for which Keosayan and his wife Margarita Simonyan are co-writers, aired a segment featuring Keosayan, and an actress in blackface posing as former United States President Barack Obama. In the segment, Keosayan, referring to Obama's book A Promised Land, asks the actress: "Do you consider this book your achievement?", to which the actress in blackface replies: "Of course."^[13]

Keosayan then asks: "Because none of your relatives have written books?", after which the actress answers: "Because none of my relatives that came before me could write." Keosayan then states "you should have a rap musician, not the president". In the segment, the actress wears a bandana and gold chains and behaves in a way regarded as stereotypical to rappers.^[13] The segment was widely deemed as being racist.^[14][15]

Filmography

As a film director

1. Katyka and Shiz (1992)
2. Cases Funny, Family Matters (1996, TV Series)
3. Poor Sasha (1997)
4. The Death Directory (1999, TV series)
5. Silver Lily of the Valley (2000)
6. The President and His Granddaughter (2000)
7. Men's Work (2001, also TV series: 2005)
8. Hare Over the Abyss (2006)
9. Rabbit Over the Void (2006)
10. Mirage (2008)
11. Yalta-45 (2011, mini-series)
12. Three Comrades (2012, mini-series)
13. Sea. Mountains. Exclay (2014, TV series)
14. Actress (2017, TV series)
15. The Crimean Bridge. Made with Love! (2018)
16. Immortals (2021)

As an actor

1. Joker (1991)
2. Silver Lily of the Valley (2000)
3. The Heat (2006)

As a writer

1. Cases Funny, Family Matters (TV Series, 1996)
2. Silver Lily of the Valley (TV series, 2005)