Ilya Petrovich Kopalin (Russian: Илья́ Петро́вич Копа́лин; 1900–1976) was a Soviet film director remembered for his documentaries. His most famous footage is that of Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt at the Yalta Conference and that of Yuri Gagarin's space flight.^[1]

He was born the son of a peasant^[2] on 2 August 1900 in the village of Pavlovskaya, Zvenigorod on the outskirts of Moscow.^[3] In his youth he worked in a factory in Moscow. After October 1917 he trained first as a land surveyor then as a pilot. A chance meeting with Dziga Vertov led him instantly into an interest in the cinema. Aged 24 he went to work for Vertov as a camera-man, working on films such as Kinoglaz,^[4] but later would work independently. His early films look at country life and agriculture in the newly created USSR.^[2]

His work gained him six Stalin Prizes and the Order of Lenin. He died in Moscow on 12 June 1976.^[5]

• Moscow (1927)
• For the Harvest (1929)
• Fifteen Years of Soviet Cinematography (1933)
• Engineers of the Human Soul (1934) – a documentary recording the First Congress of Soviet Writers
• Abyssinia (1935)
• China's Rebuff (1937)
• Ma Dunae (On the Danube) (1940) – Stalin Prize 1941
• Rout of the German Troops at Moscow (1941)
• Stalin's Speech of November 6, 1942 (1943)
• Moscow Strikes Back (1942) – Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature
• Crimea Conference (1945)
• Liberated Czechoslovakia (1945)
• Victory Day Country (1948)
• New Albania (1949)
• Man Conquers Nature (1950)
• Albania (1953)
• Great Farewell (1953)
• For Peace and Friendship (1954)
• Songs over the Vistula (1955)
• Festival Melody (1955)
• Warsaw Meeting (1956)
• Lulz Shippers (1959)
• Destiny of a Great City (1961)
• First Flight to the Stars (1961) – a chronicle of Yuri Gargarin's space flight
• Tocsin of Peace (1963)
• Qunetra Ruins Accused (1974)