Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev’s political thriller Minotaur, set against the backdrop of the Russo-Ukrainian war, sent shock waves through the Cannes Film Festival following its Tuesday night premiere.
According to a report by news agency AP, the crime film about murder and corruption in Russia has obvious political reverberations. Though outwardly centred around a married couple, it explores the conscription of young men into President Vladimir Putin's war with Ukraine.
The film received one of the festival's most enthusiastic responses, putting the Russian filmmaker squarely in the mix for the Palme d'Or.
In Minotaur, Dmitriy Mazurov essays the role of the head of a major shipping company who is asked to send 150 workers to support Russia’s escalating war effort as the country prepares for its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Simultaneously, his character becomes consumed by suspicions about his wife’s (Iris Lebedeva) alleged affair. As the story unfolds, the couple’s strained relationship gradually mirrors the betrayal, violence and moral decay associated with Vladimir Putin’s war.
“It was important for me to make this film given the current Russian context,” director Andrey Zvyagintsev told reporters on Wednesday. “It was a perfect pretext to say some important things.”
The film marks a significant return for Zvyagintsev, whose previous films, Leviathan and Loveless, both earned Oscar nominations and widespread critical acclaim. During the pandemic, however, the filmmaker battled a severe illness that left him in an induced coma for 40 days.
While recovering at a clinic in Germany, Zvyagintsev had to relearn basic tasks such as walking and using utensils. In 2022, still reliant on a wheelchair, he relocated with his family to Paris.
Reflecting on his return to the Cannes Film Festival, where his last two films premiered, Zvyagintsev described it as deeply emotional.
“It’s one of the greatest things that’s happened to me over these last nine years,” he said, adding that returning after such a long absence was “an absolutely incomparable event.”
Though Zvyagintsev had long worked in Russia and rarely made overt political statements through his films, critiques of Putin’s regime were often implicit in his storytelling. Minotaur, filmed in Latvia, is his first feature made outside Russia.
Speaking about the intersection of politics and cinema, the director said, “I didn’t want to make the most of the politics because that would discredit what you hear.”
The film’s narrative draws inspiration from The Unfaithful Wife. Zvyagintsev had begun developing the project years earlier, but the story evolved significantly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine during his recovery period. As with his earlier works, larger political realities gradually seep into an intimate domestic story.
“There’s nothing more interesting than studying a couple... A family is like a battlefield,” the 62-year-old filmmaker noted.