Igor Grabuzov

Grabuzov spent the early part of his post-graduation years building a foundation in Russian film and television — the kind of steady, unglamorous work that doesn't make headlines but matters. The turn came in 2017 with *Three Days until Spring* (*Tri dnya do vesny*), a World War II-set thriller in which he took a lead role and demonstrated real dramatic range. A year later, two projects arrived that cemented his reputation: *Dangerous Dances* (*Opasnie tanci*, 2018), where he played a composer with cerebral palsy — a performance that required him to inhabit a character's physicality without it ever feeling like a stunt — and *Why Don't You Just Die!* (2018), director Kirill Sokolov's blood-soaked, wickedly funny genre film that became something of a cult favorite internationally. Sokolov's affection for Grabuzov is documented. He's called the actor his "mascot" (IMDb) — a word that sounds casual but, in the context of filmmaking, means Sokolov keeps writing him into rooms. That kind of directorial trust doesn't happen by accident. Grabuzov also appeared in *1942: Unknown Battle* (2019) and *No Looking Back* (2021), continuing to work across genre lines in Russian production. The international pivot came sharply in 2023. He played Valentin Trifonov — a KGB operative, antagonist — in Jon S. Baird's *Tetris* for Apple TV+, a film built around the stranger-than-fiction story of how the Soviet-era puzzle game became a global commodity. It's a meaty supporting role in a production with genuine mainstream reach. That same year, he appeared as Alexander Marek in ITV's *Stonehouse*, the British drama about the disgraced MP John Stonehouse. Two English-language productions. One year. Looking ahead, he's attached to *sNezhnyy Chelovek* (2025) and *The Wizard of the Emerald City: Part II*, which suggests his pipeline remains active on both sides of the industry.