Cannes Film Festival

'Minotaur', an intimate drama to symbolise the explosion of violence

In competition at the Cannes Film Festival the highly anticipated return of Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev nine years after 'Loveless'

by Andrea Chimento

20 May 2026

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

It was undoubtedly one of the great thrills of this year's Cannes Film Festival to witness the return of Andrey Zvyagintsev, the Russian director who had been missing from the world of cinema since 2017, when he presented, again on the Croisette, the beautiful 'Loveless'.

During his nine-year absence, Zvyagintsev spent a lot of time in hospital recovering from Covid and started new projects outside his homeland.

"Minotaur", his new film in competition at Cannes, has instead come to fruition, thanks to a co-production between three countries - France, Latvia and Germany - and to the director's tenacity in wanting to tell the story of the country where he grew up but in which, as an exile, he no longer lives.

Against the backdrop of the war between Russia and Ukraine, whose echoes are omnipresent throughout the viewing, an affair unfolds concerning a middle-class family, consisting of a company director, his wife and teenage son.

However, the man begins to suspect that his wife is cheating on him, and while his family problems grow, he also faces numerous obstacles at work related to what is happening politically in the country.

Set in Russia in 2022, 'Minotaur' thus starts from an intimate family drama to depict a microcosm that then becomes a collective metaphor for an explosion of violence unpunished and accepted by the bureaucracy.

Minotaur

From Chabrol to Zvyagintsev

The Russian director takes his cue from Claude Chabrol's 'Stéphane, an Unfaithful Wife' from 1969 for this story that touches not only on what happened to his country and Europe but also on his recent life choices.

It is also for this reason that 'Minotaur', despite its great overall ambition, is an intimate and personal product that could perhaps have been even more far-reaching in the allegories proposed, given also the mythological reference in the title (Zvyagintsev's previous films already included 'Leviathan').

Despite the fact that the Russian author has done better in the past (think also of his debut, 'The Return', Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival), 'Minotaur' nevertheless has a very strong specific weight because of what it tells and how it tells it, relying moreover on an audiovisual apparatus rich in great suggestions.

Zvyagintsev shoots very well indeed and the sound choices, right from the first shot, enrich the remarkable photographic choices in no small measure.

Amarga Navidad

Also in competition at the Cannes Film Festival was 'Amarga Navidad', Pedro Almodóvar's return to competition on the Croisette seven years after his splendid 'Dolor y gloria'.

The narration is centred on the alternation of two stories: the first is set in 2004 and has as its protagonist Elsa, a director of commercials who suffers from terrible migraines; the second takes place in 2026 and has as its protagonist Raúl, a screenwriter and director who is writing a script that we will soon discover is the story of Elsa, her companion Bonifacio and other characters who gravitate around her.

In a sort of game of Chinese boxes, Elsa somehow becomes Raúl's alter ego, in turn a blatant alter ego of Pedro Almodóvar himself, who returns to that 'self-finition' often already a protagonist of his previous features.

Although it tastes a tinge of the familiar and has an uneven pace, 'Amarga Navidad' nevertheless manages to excite and make one think intelligently and rather sombrely about the relationship between reality and fiction, truth and staging.

The conclusion does not quite live up to several earlier sequences, but the Spanish director's class is by no means in question.

We will come back to it soon: the film will also be released in our cinemas this weekend.