Andrey Zvyagintsev's 'Minotaur' wins Cannes Grand Prix and will represent France at the Oscars
Summary
- Andrey Zvyagintsev's film 'Minotaur' retells Claude Chabrol's 'The Unfaithful Wife' as the story of Gleb, an executive who spies on his unfaithful wife Galina and must furnish fourteen men for Russia's war draft.
- The film won the Grand Prix, or second place, at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival and will represent France in the Oscar race for Best International Feature.
- It was shot entirely in Latvia and was mostly financed by French companies, with a script Zvyagintsev wrote with Simon Lyashenko.
- Zvyagintsev, sixty-two, moved with his family from Moscow to Paris in 2022 while recovering from a near-fatal COVID infection, and lives in self-imposed exile.
- 'Minotaur' is his first film in nine years, following 2017's 'Loveless', and his early features drew comparisons to Andrei Tarkovsky.
Reactions
- Critic Justin Chang calls the film a mesmerizing retelling and an icy study of the mechanics and erotics of corruption and power.
- Chang says Zvyagintsev makes an unexpected case for himself as the Russian Hitchcock, alert to the voyeuristic byplay of seeing and being seen.
- Chang writes that Gleb's unquestioning complicity has made a monster of him, one who profits from the blood of human sacrifice.
- Chang says the number fourteen brings the film's mythological title into crystalline focus.
- Chang says Zvyagintsev allows a more hopeful vision of the future in Seryozha, an ordinary, clearly well-loved teen-ager with a better head on his shoulders than his father.
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- The Labyrinthine Betrayals of “Minotaur”
newyorker.com· 34h
Justin Chang's New Yorker review takes up Andrey Zvyagintsev's Minotaur, a mesmerizing retelling of Chabrol's The Unfaithful Wife in which Gleb, an executive spying on his unfaithful wife Galina, must also furnish fourteen men for Russia's war draft. Shot in Latvia, French-financed, a Grand Prix winner at Cannes and France's Best International Feature entry, the film is, for Chang, an icy study of corruption and power.
