Minotaur

A privileged Russian couple, company boss Gleb and his trophy wife Galina, live a manicured and sterile life of luxury in a lakeside dacha. They want for nothing, but true desire is long dead. Gleb is a fully-conditioned state functionary while his wife does little to conceal the fact that she’s playing away. As a war with a neighbouring state (read ‘Ukraine’) ramps up, the local mayor passes on a central diktat requiring all company bosses to nominate a percentage of their male staff for frontline sacrifice, while Gleb decides to find out who his wife is seeing. Knowing he is immune from scrutiny, he deals with both issues equally ruthlessly.

Since his noted debut The Return (BFF 2003) director Andrey Zvyagintsev delivered a steady series of acclaimed works until a near-death experience during Covid led to a 9-year hiatus following 2017’s Loveless. So Minotaur is something of a miraculous comeback, and possibly his greatest film yet (the Cannes jury evidently thought so, awarding the film the 2026 Grand Prix). The parallel between the facadism of a failing marriage and state corruption is skilfully outlined and directly expressed in this cool masterpiece, which combines detached, forensic camerawork with formidable performances in one of the most powerful films of the festival.