Andrey Zvyagintsev faced the press at Cannes on Tuesday to take part in the competition Minotaurhis first film produced entirely outside of Russia, is arguably the most directly political work of his career.
The film is set in the fictional Russian city of Krasnobursk in 2022 and was filmed entirely in Riga, Latvia. Minotaur The film revolves around a shipping company CEO (played by Dmitry Mazurov), whose investigation into his wife’s infidelity (Iris Lebedeva) gradually gives way to dealing with state violence, forced conscription and moral collapse. Visually, the film presents its world—bleak residential areas, empty streets, and surveillance-era interiors—with the cold precision of a crime scene.
Zvyagintsev has been living in exile in France since suffering a near-fatal bout with the coronavirus in 2020 that left him temporarily unable to move — a period that coincided almost exactly with Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Zvyagintsev described his return to Cannes as one of “the best things that has happened to me” over the past nine years, and said that despite his time abroad, he remains fully aware of the situation inside Russia. “I left Russia 6 years ago but have spent about 60 years in the country. I know a lot about corruption. I know what I’m talking about.”
Zvyagintsev said that given “current Russian content,” with the ongoing war in Ukraine, casualties mounting on both sides, and state-run propaganda dominating the airwaves, he felt it was “important to make this film… It was a perfect excuse to say some important things.”
But at the press conference, Zvyagintsev avoided overt political statements, arguing that “sometimes it is better to indulge in silence and rely on gestures.”
Zvyagintsev said he began thinking about the idea for the film, an adaptation of Claude Chabrol’s film. The unfaithful wife (1969) after he presented his distinguished film in 2017 Without loveLong before the all-out invasion of Ukraine. But the invasion, and Russia’s military mobilization of fighting-age men, began soon after he began working on the screenplay, which prompted him to include them in the story to “fill in the gaps” in Chabrol’s film.
The director’s relationship with Russian cultural authorities has long been fraught. Nominated for an Oscar JuggernautThe film, which premiered at Cannes and won the award for best screenplay, received government funding, but drew a sharp rebuke from then-Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky, who later indicated that the ministry had no plans to support Zvyagintsev’s future projects.
