Two-time Oscar nominee Andrey Zvyagintsev will make his highly anticipated return to the Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday, premiering his first feature film in nine years after a near-death experience during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Zvyagintsev, director of the acclaimed films "Leviathan" and "Loveless," was left in a coma and unable to walk for a year after an extreme reaction to Russia's Sputnik V vaccine in 2021.
After treatment in Europe, where he now lives in exile, the 62-year-old began work on "Minotaur," which is running in the main competition at Cannes.
"The pandemic really hit me hard. I was bedridden. I couldn’t move my hands. I couldn’t move my legs," he told The Hollywood Reporter ahead of the premiere at Cannes.
Zvyagintsev said that the experience of a coma and living in a wheelchair had convinced him that he needed "to live in the fast lane."
