Yulduz Rizayeva

Yulduz Akramovna Rizayeva was born in 1926 in Fergana. After finishing school she entered the film-actors’ school attached to the Tashkent film studio, graduated in 1946 and joined the studio’s staff as an actress.

She became known for the part of Zuhra in “Tohir and Zuhra” (1945, directed by Nabi Ganiev), the first Uzbek feature film shown abroad; it premiered in Moscow. For the same director she played Zulfi in “The Adventures of Nasreddin” and Dilbar, the lead, in “The Girl from Fergana”, and in 1954 Komila in “The Rakhmanov Sisters”.

In 1948 Rizayeva entered the theatre-studies faculty of the Ostrovsky Tashkent Theatre and Art Institute and graduated in 1953. Her work then took another direction: she was first an editor at the Tashkent film studio and, from 1960, an editor of the dubbing group and a translator at Uzbekfilm.

For many years she worked on dubbing films into Uzbek and on translating the cutting scripts of feature films; as an editor she took part in, among others, “Hamlet” and “King Lear”. She was repeatedly elected a deputy of district and Tashkent city soviets.

Yulduz Rizayeva died in Tashkent on 11 January 2003. She held the title of Honoured Artist of the Uzbek SSR and the badge of Excellence in USSR Cinematography; in 2026 she was posthumously given the Order «Mehnat shuhrati» (Glory of Labour).