We nearly lost this master filmmaker during the Covid pandemic and so Minotaur counts as Andrey Zvyagintsev’s first oeuvre after being hospitalized for a year and his debut work outside his homeland. His feature debut The Return (2003) won the Golden Lion and Luigi De Laurentiis Award for Best First Film, and every single other film has premiered in Cannes competition (oddly 2011’s Elena was mysteriously programmed in the Un Certain Regard section). Following 2007’s The Banishment, Best Screenplay winning Leviathan (2014) and Jury Prize winning Loveless (2017), this new film is set against the backdrop of a provincial Russian small town in 2022, it follows business executive Gleb is on the verge of laying off his employees when he discovers his wife is having an affair. Iris Lebedeva stars as Galina and Dmitriy Mazurov stars as Gleb. His usual themes include moral decay within modern society, family as a battlefield and power, helplessness and institutional oppression. This co-prod from France, Latvia, Germany is competition film #15 of 22.
On our grid 2014’s Leviathan ended up with a 3.0 average while Loveless had an imposing 3.5 average. Today’s just after 3p.m. world premiere took place and while we have just a handful of grades in, looks like this Minotaur will also be a contender. Stay tuned!
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