From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Larysa Efimovna Shepitko (6 January 1938, Artemivsk, Ukrainian SSR – 2 June 1979, Kalinin Oblast) was a Ukrainian Soviet film director. She went to the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography in Moscow as a student of Olexander Dovzhenko. She was a student of Dovzhenko's for 18 months until he died in 1956. Shepitko graduated from VGIK in 1963 with her prize winning diploma film Heat, made