Nearly a decade after his last film, “Loveless,” won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, two-time Academy Award nominee Andrey Zvyagintsev (“Leviathan”) returns to the Croisette with “Minotaur,” a modern-day parable about the emotional and moral collapse of a Russian businessman whose world unravels amid professional crises, global chaos and an extramarital affair. Zvyagintsev, who survived a near-death experience during the coronavirus pandemic, spoke to Variety about his latest Palme d’Or contender.
You’ve been living in Paris for nearly four years since recovering from a life-threatening illness. Was that a political choice?
I spent almost one year in a clinic in Germany, where after spending 40 days [in a medically induced] coma I was not able to stand up. When I left the clinic, I moved to France and I decided to stay in France. And more and more, I’m convinced that I should stay here. I have no desire and no interest and no intention to live in a country that’s at war with its neighbors.
Do you see yourself returning to Russia someday?
[Nobel Prize-winning Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov] said there is a choice: to stay with your motherland but to lose your freedom, or to stay with your freedom but to lose your motherland. My intention is very visible because my actions speak more than my words. I think there is no need to speak about this. There is no need to pronounce anything. I think it’s very important to act and not to talk. My actions are my language, and my language is cinema.
