Zvyagintsev's 'Minotaur' Turns a Marriage Thriller Into a Wartime Reckoning

Andrey Zvyagintsev's "Minotaur" opens in U.S. theaters on Nov. 20 with the Cannes Grand Prix already in hand and France's Oscar submission for best international picture attached to its name — despite being filmed entirely in Russian. The director survived a medically induced coma, lost most of his lung function, and left his homeland before making it.

The film began, improbably, as a remake. A French producer asked Zvyagintsev — best known for his Oscar-nominated 2014 film "Leviathan" — about redoing Claude Chabrol's 1969 thriller "La Femme Infidèle" ("The Unfaithful Wife"), the story of a businessman who suspects his wife of adultery. Zvyagintsev, living in France, wanted to keep that plot. But he felt the project needed a second storyline capturing what Russia had become since President Vladimir V. Putin invaded Ukraine.

"It had to be a statement, a film that would bear witness to the times," Zvyagintsev said. "The only question was how to go about it."

How the draft became the second plot

About a week after he started writing in 2022, Putin declared a "partial mobilization" — a draft — prompting hundreds of thousands of men to flee Russia. A friend called Zvyagintsev from a provincial town in distress: the mayor had summoned local businessmen to decide which of their employees should be sent to the front. Zvyagintsev called his co-writer, Simon Lyashenko, and said he had the answer.

The result follows Gleb (Dmitriy Mazurov), an executive in a fictitious provincial Russian city, who suspects his wife (Iris Lebedeva) of cheating just as the mayor pressures his business over the draft. Shot in Riga, Latvia, it is the first major Russian-language drama to show, in unvarnished terms, how the war has transformed Russian society. Directors who stayed in Russia have largely retreated into fantasy and historical films; those touching the war mostly make propaganda.

"I really wanted to see something on this topic, and it finally appeared," said Zinaida Pronchenko, a Russian film critic living in France. "It's clear Zvyagintsev wanted to do something elegant and didn't want to make propaganda."

What changed for the director

Zvyagintsev's circumstances have shifted drastically since "Leviathan," which depicted small-town corruption crushing a car mechanic in the Russian Arctic. Putin supporters attacked him for exposing Russian institutions; the culture minister said the state would no longer fund films showing a "crappy Russia." Yet Russia still submitted "Leviathan" to the Academy Awards. He made "Loveless" in Russia in 2017.

Then, in mid-2021, he fell critically ill after receiving the Sputnik V vaccine in Moscow, possibly while unknowingly having Covid-19. He lost most lung function, suffered a blood clot and sepsis, spent weeks in a coma, then contracted Guillain-Barré syndrome, which left him unable to use his arms and legs. During rehabilitation in Hannover, his wife told him Putin had invaded Ukraine. He spoke out against the war, moved to France, and said he cried for months. His life, he said, could "switch off, just like a lightbulb." Hence the impatience to work.

What does the title mean?

The mythological Minotaur was fed 14 Athenians every nine years — and Zvyagintsev's film is partly about Russia feeding innocent men to the beast of war. But it's also about marriage: he cited Balzac's 1829 essay "The Physiology of Marriage," which compares married life to a labyrinth where a husband fears a lover could "minotaurize" him.

Zvyagintsev rejects blunt political cinema. "It can't just be a direct, straightforward statement," he said. "It should be about morality, about the ethical choices an individual faces." He demanded Putin "put an end to the carnage" in his Cannes speech, and he asked actors invited to tryouts in Latvia to stay home if they wouldn't risk retribution from Russian authorities.

The film has no chance of release in Russia, though he expects piracy to spread it widely. Some Ukrainians criticized his Cannes win for downplaying Russian society's complicity. "Simply saying 'society' is just a nice-sounding phrase," he replied. "There are actual people who make the decisions." To Ukrainians who asked why he evokes sympathy for mobilized men, he said the answer lies with the audience: "You can find the strength within yourselves to remain human — which means showing compassion for people who were never even asked; they were simply taken and thrown into the furnace."