“Minotaur”, a great and deeply political film
The highly anticipated return of Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev is now in cinemas, nine years after “Loveless”
It was undoubtedly one of the most significant pieces of film news of the year: the return behind the camera of Andrey Zvyagintsev, the Russian director who had been absent from the world of cinema since 2017, when he presented the beautiful “Loveless” at the Cannes Film Festival.
During these nine years away, Zvyagintsev spent a great deal of time in hospital, having been admitted with Covid, and embarked on new projects, carried out outside his homeland, though work on them has since been put on hold.
“Minotaur”, one of the most eagerly awaited films of the weekend at the cinema, has finally come to fruition, thanks to a co-production involving three countries – France, Latvia and Germany – and the director’s determination to portray the country where he grew up but no longer lives.
Against the backdrop of the war between Russia and Ukraine – the echoes of which are ever-present throughout the film – a story unfolds centring on a middle-class family comprising a company director, his wife and their teenage son. However, the man begins to suspect that his wife is cheating on him and, as his family problems mount, his company too must face numerous obstacles linked to the political situation in the country.
Set in Russia in 2022, “Minotaur” begins as an intimate family drama before depicting a microcosm that eventually becomes a collective metaphor for an outburst of violence that goes unpunished and is accepted by the bureaucracy.
