Cannes film festival: The great Russian director of Leviathan, Loveless and The Return has overcome extraordinary obstacles to present his first film in nine years
H
is films have been hailed as damning allegories of the Russian population’s apathy in the face of state oppression. Yet when director Andrey Zvyagintsev learned of his country’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, he too was paralysed, and literally so.
A severe infection with Covid-19 had left the film-maker stranded at a clinic in Hanover, Germany, struggling to breathe with 90% lung damage and unable to move or feel his limbs for several months. “It was in this state that I learned of the outbreak of the war in Ukraine,” he said in a rare recent interview. “It was a shock; I felt immense pain and deep despair.” In all, he spent 11 months in assorted hospitals.
Yet Zvyagintsev recovered. He relearned to walk and hold a spoon, and managed to channel his anguish back into film-making. The outcome will premiere on Tuesday in France at Cannes – the country where he has chosen to go into exile and the festival that cemented his reputation as Russia’s most important contemporary director with the launch in 2014 of Leviathan, a crime drama of Old Testament-level moral intensity.
