Boris Valentinovich Durov (12 March 1937 – 5 April 2007) was a Soviet and Russian film director and screenwriter. His 1979 action film Pirates of the 20th Century became the highest-grossing Soviet movie of all time. He was named Merited Artist of the Russian Federation in 2000. Boris Durov was born in Sloviansk, Ukrainian SSR (modern-day Ukraine). He finished the Kazan Suvorov Military School in 1955 and the Riga Higher Military Aviation Engineering School in 1960. At that point he decided not to continue the military career and entered the director's faculty at VGIK. He studied under Yakov Segel along with Stanislav Govorukhin. Upon graduation in 1967 they co-directed their first feature film: Vertical. It was one of the first Soviet movies dedicated to mountaineering and also featured Vladimir Vysotsky in a minor role. As Vysotsky later recalled, "it was my first movie in the sense that I worked as an author (for the first time I wrote songs for a movie) – I was the author of both songs and music". All songs turned into instant hits, they were released by the Melodiya record label on the extended play and basically started Vysotsky's musical career. The movie itself became one of the leaders of the 1967 Soviet box office, reaching the 13th place (10th place among Soviet-produced movies) with 32.8 million viewers. Since then Durov had worked at various studios (Odessa Film Studio, Studio Ekran, Gorky Film Studio, Moldova-Film) directing movies in various genres, from drama and comedy to adventure and children's films. Yet none of them matched the success of his first film or that of Govorukhin's movies. In 1979 they teamed up again and wrote a screenplay for what would be known as the first Soviet action film – Pirates of the 20th Century.

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