Returning to Cannes after nine years, Zvyagintsev was awarded the Grand Prix for Minotaur. The film depicts a successful businessman who believes he has firm control over his life, who runs headlong into the fissures of the world around him. Zvyagintsev’s dramas always begin from the domain of family before arriving at religious and mythic horizons, and this new film, while carrying mythic overtones in its very title, keeps its feet firmly planted on real ground. In its extended crime sequence, it is as accessible as a Chabrol thriller, while in exposing troubling wartime conditions it holds fast to political critique. If the premise sounds familiar, you’ll instead feel the film’s temperature steadily rising. His characteristically cool touch remains intact, yet the film’s intense pull draws you into a feverish rhythm all the same. The word ‘Minotaur’ usually conjures a monster trapped in a labyrinth. But in truth, the labyrinth is nothing other than a trap laid by human beings themselves, and those scarred by that trap ultimately turn into monsters. The journey to cloud-covered Crete bears this out.
Andrey Zvyagintsev was born in Novosibirsk, Russia, in 1964. He studied acting at GITIS (the Russian Institute of Theatre Arts) and worked as an actor before turning to directing in 2000. His feature debut, The Return (2003), made a stunning entrance onto the world film stage by winning the Golden Lion at Venice, while The Banishment (2007) earned the first-ever Best Actor award for a Russian artist at Cannes. Following Elena (2011), Leviathan (2014) won the Best Screenplay prize at Cannes and the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film, going on to earn an Oscar nomination. Loveless (2017) won the Jury Prize at Cannes and brought him a second Oscar nomination, making him a director who has been nominated for the Academy Award twice. He left Russia and settled in Paris following the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. His latest film, Minotaur, based on Claude Chabrol′s classic The Unfaithful Wife (1969), marks his return after nine years away from the screen following his brush with death, and won the Grand Prix in competition at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival.
From Busan International Film Festival 2026, No. 31
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