Exiled Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev is addressing the impact of the conflict in Ukraine through his latest film, Minotaur. The drama, which explores themes of conscription and ethical breakdown, was released nearly five years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion. Having secured the Grand Prix at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, the movie is officially an entry for the 2027 Oscar for best international film. Its release coincides with persistent debate regarding Russia’s ability to sustain troop levels in a war that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. Later, the image of an older recruit appears on a roadside billboard: he is dead and celebrated as a war hero.
The narrative follows Gleb, a logistics business owner struggling with his wife’s infidelity while facing demands from the local mayor to provide 14 employees for military service. To avoid sacrificing his current workforce, Gleb recruits new drivers with high-salary promises, only to send them directly to the front. Zvyagintsev, 62, noted in an interview that for a director born and raised in Russia who uses the language, ignoring the most significant event of recent years would be impossible. The film captures the raw grief of war, including scenes of conscripts boarding buses as parents bid tearful, desperate goodbyes to their children. The owner of a logistics company who is coming to grips with his wife having an affair, while being pressured by the local mayor to identify 14 employees for military service, the story centres on Gleb. With a father saying goodbye to his teenage son, while the mother of another screams in anguish, one scene shows Russian conscripts boarding a bus for the front.
Zvyagintsev, internationally renowned for his previous Oscar-nominated films Leviathan and Loveless, departed Russia in 2021 before the start of the conflict. He now resides in France, where Minotaur was produced. Although the film is in Russian, its subject matter effectively bars it from an official release in his home country. In August, Russian authorities designated Zvyagintsev a foreign agent—a label for public figures accused of carrying out anti-Russian activities with foreign backing—though the director has declined to comment on the personal or professional consequences of this status. Best known internationally for “Leviathan,” and “Lovelessm” both Oscar nominated, now lives in France, having left Russia in 2021, months before Moscow launched what it calls its special militar, the 62-year-old director. Relying instead on recruitment drives and signing bonuses, though some analysts say a fresh mobilisation cannot be ruled out, moscow has avoided another compulsory mobilisation since its politically damaging 2022 call-up.
The film’s evolution was shaped by current events. Originally conceived as a remake of Claude Chabrol’s 1969 thriller La Femme Infidele, the screenplay was transformed when work began in 2022. The suburban Paris setting was shifted to a bleak Russian town, recasting domestic tensions against the reality of war. Reflecting on the timing, Zvyagintsev remarked that he was fortunate they could not secure the rights between 2018 and 2019, as the final product is a direct result of the current political environment.
While polls from the Levada Centre in 2026 suggest over 70 percent of Russians still support the military campaign, approximately 67 percent of respondents also favor peace negotiations. Zvyagintsev remains skeptical that art can rapidly shift public perception, describing propaganda as a crude, heavy instrument compared to the subtle, long-term impact of cinema. Unable to return to Russia since a severe COVID-19 infection in 2021, the director used a Latvian town as a cinematic stand-in to capture the atmosphere. Critics have hailed the film, which hits French cinemas on October 14, as one of his most transparent critiques of the moral and political state of contemporary Russia. It’s a very crude instrument,” he said. “Art, on the other hand, deals with subtleties. “Propaganda is like a heavy hammer, like pliers, like an anvil.
