Andrey Zvyagintsev confronted the Cannes press on Tuesday for his participation within the competitors Minotaurhis first movie made fully exterior Russia, and undoubtedly his most instantly political work of his profession.
Set within the fictional Russian metropolis of Krasnoborsk in 2022 and filmed fully in Riga, Latvia, Minotaur follows the CEO of a transport firm (performed by Dmitriy Mazurov), whose investigation into the infidelity of his spouse (Iris Lebedeva) step by step offers solution to a reckoning with state violence, conscription and ethical collapse. Visually, the movie renders its world – grim housing estates, empty streets, surveillance-era interiors – with the chilly precision of a criminal offense scene.
Zvyagintsev has lived in exile in France since struggling a near-fatal bout of COVID in 2020 that left him quickly unable to maneuver – a interval that coincided nearly precisely with Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Calling his return to Cannes “among the best issues that occurred to me” within the final 9 years, Zvyagintsev mentioned that regardless of his time overseas, he was nonetheless intimately conscious of the scenario in Russia. “I left Russia 6 years in the past however I spent about 60 years on this nation. I do know lots about corruption. I do know what I am speaking about.”
Given the “present Russian content material”, Zvyagintsev mentioned, with the continued battle in Ukraine, mounting losses on either side and state propaganda dominating the airwaves, he felt it was “necessary to make this movie…it was an ideal excuse to say necessary issues”.
However on the press convention, Zvyagintsev averted open political statements, arguing that “generally it’s higher to take pleasure in silence and depend on gestures.”
Zvyagintsev mentioned he began fascinated by the thought for the movie, a free adaptation of Claude Chabrol’s movie The untrue spouse (1969) after directing his 2017 characteristic movie With out lovelengthy earlier than the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. However the invasion and Russian army mobilization of fighting-age males started shortly after he started work on the script, main him to incorporate them within the story “to fill within the gaps” in Chabrol’s movie.
The director’s relations with Russian cultural authorities have lengthy been strained. His Oscar nominee Leviathanwhich premiered in Cannes gained the Finest Screenplay award, obtained state funding, but it surely was sharply criticized by the then Minister of Tradition, Vladimir Medinsky, who later advised that the ministry had no intention of supporting Zvyagintsev’s future initiatives.