Well-known Soviet and Tajik filmmaker and actor Marat Aripov has died in Dushanbe yesterday on the 84 year of his life, after a long illness

Marat Aripov was born in Stalinabad (Dushanbe) on July 27, 1935 in the family of the well-known Tajik singer and actress and singer of the Soviet era Tuhfa Fozilova.

Marat Aripov received his early education in Stalinabad before graduating from the Tashkent Theater and Art Institute in 1960.  In 1965, he graduated from the Moscow Institute of Cinematography (VGIK).

As actor, Marat Aripov became well-known across the former Soviet Union for his roles in Avicenna (1956), The Fate of Poet (1959), Kaveh the Blacksmith (1961), The Siege (1977), and others.  One of his last roles was the role of teacher in Muallim (The Teacher) (2014).  

As filmmaker, Marat Aripov became well-known for his movies Nisso (1965), My Heart in the Highlands (1968), The Mystery of Ancestors (1972), The Siege (1977), and others. 

At the age of 21, he became the youngest honored artist in the history of Tajikistan (at that time – the Tajik SSR). Acting fame brought him the painting «The Fate of the Poet», where he played one of the founders of Persian and Tajik literature, Rudaki, for this role he was in 1960 awarded the Diploma of the All-Union Film Festival 1960 in Minsk and the Cairo Film Festival Prize. He also has a diploma «For the best debut» of a review by cinematographers of Central Asia and Kazakhstan for the production of the film «Nisso».