Minotaur Jolts Cannes, Putting Zvyagintsev's 150-Worker War Drama in Palme d'Or Contention
Updated
Updated · The Associated Press · May 20
Minotaur Jolts Cannes, Putting Zvyagintsev's 150-Worker War Drama in Palme d'Or Contention
12 articles · Updated · The Associated Press · May 20
Tuesday night's Cannes premiere gave “Minotaur” one of the festival’s strongest receptions, quickly elevating Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Russia-set crime drama into the Palme d’Or conversation.
Set during Russia’s February 2022 mobilization, the film follows a shipping executive ordered to supply 150 workers for the war effort as a marital investigation opens into murder, corruption and the deceptions of Putin’s war.
Zvyagintsev said the invasion reshaped a project he had been developing for years, turning a couple’s story inspired by Claude Chabrol’s “The Unfaithful Wife” into a broader portrait of Russian brutality and corruption.
The film also marks a personal comeback: after a 40-day induced coma during the pandemic, Zvyagintsev recovered in Germany, moved to Paris in 2022 and returned to Cannes with his first feature made outside Russia, shot in Latvia.
After surviving a near-fatal illness, why did director Andrey Zvyagintsev create his most profoundly hopeless film yet?
With Russia silencing its filmmakers, how did this scathing cinematic indictment of the state become a global sensation?