Exiled Russian filmmaker Andrey Zvyagintsev used his acceptance speech at the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday to make a direct appeal to Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine.
Standing on stage to receive the festival’s second-highest honour, the Grand Prix, for his latest film Minotaur, Zvyagintsev addressed Putin.
“There is someone else I would like to address personally today, on my own behalf. He is not using a VPN to watch this ceremony live, but I am certain, in fact, that he has other decisions to make – far more important ones – at this very moment. Nor is he using the internet to hear this statement I am making to him, but I know there are people around him, his entourage, who will convey these words to him”.
“And here are those: ‘Millions of people on both sides of the front line dream of only one thing: for the massacres to stop. The only person who can stop this butchery is the President of the Russian Federation. Put an end to this carnage; the whole world is waiting for it’,” he added.
Zvyagintsev, who has lived in exile from Russia, also thanked the Cannes jury and MK2 Films co-chief executive Nathanael Karmitz during his speech.
Set in Russia in 2022, Minotaur follows Gleb (Dmitriy Mazurov), a successful company director whose orderly life begins to collapse amid rising corporate pressure and a volatile social climate that descends toward violence.
The French-German-Latvian co-production marks Zvyagintsev’s first feature film in nearly a decade. The film reunites the director with longtime collaborators cinematographer Mikhail Krichman and production designer Andrey Ponkratov. Iris Lebedeva also stars.
Minotaur is also set to screen in competition at the Sydney Film Festival, where it will have its Australian premiere on June 12.