Minotaur

Andrey Zvyagintsev first gained international recognition with “The Return”, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2003. Very few directors manage to win the main prize at a major festival with their debut feature, and from that moment there were high expectations around his career.

He followed it with “The Banishment”, which premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival and won the Best Actor prize. Even though the film received mixed reviews, it confirmed Zvyagintsev as one of the most important directors of the new wave of Russian cinema.

His third feature, “Elena”, premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Special Jury Prize, the main award of the section. Honestly, I always felt that placing the film in Un Certain Regard instead of the main competition was unfair considering Zvyagintsev previous films and success. In the end, the award of the Special Jury Prize, only confirmed the quality of the movie and how strong it was compared to the rest of the section. It is one of the films I would most recommend to understand his filmography because of how it portrays the social structure of Moscow and the divide between wealthy citizens and the working class. The movie feels cold and distant, but at the same time deeply human in the way it observes family relationships, money, and resentment.

His fourth film, “Leviathan”, brought him worldwide recognition. The film returned him to the main competition at Cannes, where it won Best Screenplay and received some of the strongest reviews of his career. What made the movie especially striking was its direct portrayal of corruption inside the Russian political system, with scenes openly criticizing institutions and authority. Despite the controversy surrounding the film in Russia, it was selected as the country’s submission for the Academy Awards, where it received a nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. It also won the same category at the Golden Globe Awards, helping Zvyagintsev become one of the most internationally recognized Russian directors of the last decade.

His last feature film, “Loveless”, also premiered in competition at Cannes and won the Jury Prize. In this movie, Zvyagintsev explored the collapse of a marriage through the disappearance of a couple’s son, using the situation to portray emotional emptiness, resentment, and the coldness between humans. The film was produced with stronger European support after the backlash against Leviathan and the growing distance between the director and the Russian government. Even so, Russia once again selected the film as its submission for the Oscars, where it received another nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.

After Loveless, it was announced that Zvyagintsev would direct his first English-language project, “What Happens”. Unfortunately, the project was cancelled after the director suffered severe complications from COVID-19 and spent hospitalized in France. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he decided not to return to Russia and remained in France.

In 2022 he tried to develop another project titled “Jupiter”, a story about a Russian oligarch, but financing problems stopped the production. Later, he decided to move forward with a smaller project that eventually became Minotaur.

The film is a Russian-language co-production between France, Latvia, and Germany, filmed mainly in Riga, Latvia, although according to Zvyagintsev the city is portrayed as Russia throughout the movie. MUBI has already acquired distribution rights for the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and Latin America, showing the strong expectations surrounding the project even before its release.

What excites me the most about this film is Zvyagintsev’s way of portraying emotions and isolation. Nature often feels like another character in his movies, emphasizing emotional decay and the loneliness of the people on screen. His films usually rely on silence, atmosphere, and long conversations where the tension grows slowly instead of exploding immediately.

I have only watched his last three films, but some scenes remain constantly in my mind. In Leviathan, the waves hitting the shore while music from Akhnaten plays in the background create a feeling of sadness and inevitability that stays long after the movie ends. The courtroom scenes, with their cold and mechanical language, make the political system feel impossible to escape. It is probably my favourite film from Zvyagintsev because of how it combines personal tragedy, political criticism, and nature into the same atmosphere of decay. In Loveless, the dark winter atmosphere, the forests around Moscow, and the disappearance of the child slowly reveal the emotional emptiness of the characters and the lack of connection between them. Elena feels quieter and more intimate, but still carries the same cold observation of family relationships, class, and resentment.

This is easily one of the films I am most excited to watch in 2026. I want to see how Zvyagintsev returns after almost a decade without directing a feature film, how festivals and critics react to his comeback, and how he approaches Russian society again after leaving the country and rebuilding his career in Europe.