The director and journalist Rodion Chepel’ made a documentary about the creator of VKontakte and Telegram.

on his Instagram account Chepel’ shared that he did not believe in the success of this story, since Durov's company is one of the most closed in the IT field. However, the film crew was given access to all the processes taking place within the company. And the main character of the picture personally advised the team.

According to Rodion Chepel’, he did not seek approval from Durov, but he believes it is right that the release of the film should not harm the characters. To show the draft material to Pavel and to avoid leaks, the director specially flew to him in Dubai.

Film critic Yulia Shamporova is sure that the film will interest the Russian business community. Always closed, Durov tells a story about himself in a filmed movie: he let the creators of the tape, who came to Dubai, into the life and allowed them to shoot workflows. Since there have always been a lot of rumors around Pavel's personality, the public will be interested in getting to know him better.

The first show of the documentary will take place at the Moscow International Film Festival in late April. After that, viewers will be able to watch the film in online cinemas.

Who is Pavel Durov?

Interest in the name of Pavel Durov arose back in 2006 when he created a project called Student.ru. A little later, it was renamed VKontakte.

In the first 2 years of its existence, it registered more than 20 million users.

8 years after the creation of the social network, Durov has disagreements with shareholders. He sold his stake and left the company. To date, the owner of "VKontakte" is Mail.Ru Group.

Since 2013, Pavel Durov has been actively developing a new project — the Telegram messenger, the main feature of which is the preservation of user privacy. Durov refuses to cooperate with the governments of different countries, so the messenger is banned, for example, in China and Iran. Russia's Roskomnadzor has been trying to block access to Telegram since 2018, but so far without success.

In early April, Forbes published another list of the richest people in the world. Pavel Durov is among them. His fortune is estimated at $ 17 billion.

VKontakte fall history

Journalist Alexey Pivovarov on his YouTube channel "Redakcia" posted a documentary film dedicated to the history of the creation of Russian social networks "Vkontakte" and "Odnoklassniki".

Today, social networks are subject to total control by the state. But the creators of the communities put a different idea in their projects, they wanted to make a "territory of personal freedom".

The film, created by the "Redakcia", tells about the history of social networks since their foundation, as well as why Durov left his brainchild, left the country, and how VKontakte is developing now under the leadership of Mail.ru Group.