Biography
Satayev was born to a family of actors, both his parents were recognized as People's Artistes of the Kazakh SSR and performed leading roles at Karaganda Drama Theater where he spent a lot of time. That theater became his first drama school, and in 1994 Satayev graduated from Kazakh National Academy of Arts, Department of Cinema and Television.
While at university, Satayev played student Azat, the main character in Allazhar, a movie by Kaldybay Abenov about tragic events in Alma-Ata in December 1986. After graduation, Satayev took part in various feature films and went into directing and producing advertising clips. Sataifilm, the company he founded in 2003, presented Racketeer, a crime drama and his debut movie, in 2007.
In 2016, Satayev founded the Astana Film Fund to support young Kazakh directors and low-budget indie productions en masse. In the same year he shot 2 feature-length movies, Districts, a teenage crime drama set in the USSR, and The Road to Mother, a period drama about the Soviet collectivization period, the Eastern Front, and the Kazakh post-war years.
Satayev led Kazakhfilm, the largest movie studio in Kazakhstan from 2020 to 2022.
