In 1952, together with his family, he moved to the village of Russkaya Polyana near the city of Cherkasy (Ukraine). He learned Ukrainian language and graduated from the Ukrainian school. He tried to enter the
Kyiv Polytechnic Institute at the Faculty of Cinematographers, but he could not stand the entrance exams. For a year, he worked in the woods of a woodcutter, then went to work in
Arkhangelsk. In 1956 he went to Lviv, where he entered and graduated from
Ukrainian Academy of Printing. In 1963 he sent his work to the contest in Moscow. In 1964-1968 he studied at
VGIK (Alexey Speshnev's workshop, then Ilya Vaysfeld). Already in the second year of the VGIK the script of Viktor was shot by his first short film. According to Viktor Merezhko's scripts, 50 films and 12 animated films were shot, among them such famous films as
Family Relations,
Flights in Dreams and Reality,
You are waited by Citizen Nikanorova,
A Lonely Woman Wants to Meet,
Assia and the Hen with the Golden Eggs. He is known as a playwright. In 1989-1994, Merezhko led the popularity in the USSR program
Kinopanorama. Since 1994 to 2002 he was the host of the program
My Cinema of TV channel
TV-6 Moscow. He was Secretary of
Union of Cinematographers of the Russian Federation, Member of the Writers' Union of Russia, Honored Artist of the RSFSR (1988). From the very first of his works as screenwriter, Viktor Merezhko has indicated his interest in the moral problems of modern society. In his works, the relationship of the characters and their social conflict determine the plot of the films. Merezhko died from
COVID-19 complications in Moscow on 30 January 2022, at the age of 84. ==References==