Andrey Zvyagintsev has returned to the Cannes Film Festival with his new feature, “Minotaur,” following an 18-month battle with long Covid that left him in an induced coma for 40 days and unable to move for a year, per hollywoodreporter.com.
Speaking through a translator ahead of the film’s premiere on May 19, the award-winning Russian filmmaker described his recovery as a miracle that fundamentally accelerated his approach to filmmaking.
The project is Zvyagintsev’s first film in nine years, following 2017’s Loveless. The director revealed that his medical ordeal began during the pandemic, resulting in severe lung damage and a prolonged rehabilitation period in Germany and Paris. He only regained the ability to walk in August 2022.
Co-written with Simon Lyashenko, “Minotaur” is a loose adaptation of Claude Chabrol’s 1969 French-Italian erotic thriller The Unfaithful Wife. Although Zvyagintsev initially attempted to secure the adaptation rights in 2018, production only moved forward after the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war, allowing him to shift the narrative setting to September 2022.
The director stated that the film directly addresses the declaration of overall military mobilisation in Russia. Operating outside of domestic censorship, Zvyagintsev emphasised that it would have been impossible for him to ignore the contemporary geopolitical reality outside his window.
Production for Minotaur took place entirely in Latvia, as filming inside Russia is no longer possible for the director. The production utilised local crews and Baltic locations that mirrored run-down Moscow suburbs, maintaining a Russian-speaking working environment for an international creative team scattered across Europe and North America.
Zvyagintsev established himself as a leading voice in contemporary cinema with his critically acclaimed debut The Return in 2003, followed by Elena, Leviathan, and Loveless. All three later films secured major prizes at the Cannes Film Festival, with Leviathan and Loveless also earning Academy Award nominations for Best International Feature Film for their stark, realistic depictions of Russian society.
•Featured image: Andrey Zvyagintsev/Oleg Nikishin/Getty Images
