Minotaur
The year is 2022 and the backdrop is Putin’s corruption-drenched Russia in LEVIATHAN Oscar-nominee Andrey Zvyagintsev’s latest, his first feature in a decade after 2017’s astounding LOVELESS. A bone-chilling reimagining of both Claude Chabrol’s LA FEMME INFIDELE and Adrian Lyne’s UNFAITHFUL, Zvyagintsev’s own thriller follows the essentials of the source material: amid various work pressures, a powerful businessman (Dmitriy Mazurov) learns that his increasingly distant wife (Iris Lebedeva) is cheating on him. But the filmmaker also puts a masterfully nihilistic spin on the story’s machinations, wondering, with his ingenious inquisitiveness and observantly still camerawork, if any authority in his motherland would care about unspeakable acts of crime when the country is at war with Ukraine, and a sense of lawlessness has seized the higher-ups. The winner of the Grand Prix prize at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, MINOTAUR gifts us a parting note that feels like a silent scream with echoes that inhabit the soul. -- Tomris Laffly
Director/s
Andrey Zviaguintsev
Born on the 6th of February in 1964 in Novosibirsk, Andrey Zvyagintsev made his feature debut with The Return (2003), winning the Golden Lion and Lion of the Future awards at the Venice Film Festival. That was followed by The Banishment (2007); Elena (2011), winner of Cannes’ Un Certain Regard Special Jury Prize; Leviathan (2014), winner of Cannes’ Best Screenplay Award and a nominee for the Best Foreign Language Academy Award®; and Loveless (2018), winner of Cannes’ Jury Prize and recipient of a Best Foreign Language Academy Award. His latest film, Minotaur (2026), won Cannes’ Grand Prix and Cannes Soundtrack awards.