Meet ‘Minotaur’: Watch the Exclusive Trailer for the Cannes-Winning Political Thriller

In a sense, Andrey Zvyagintsev has been here before. The acclaimed Russian director’s previous two films, Leviathan and Loveless, had both won prizes at the Cannes Film Festival before making their North American premieres in Telluride, stoking Oscar buzz; he made the rounds in Los Angeles, shaking hands with voters while presenting his stark, uncompromising visions of contemporary Russian life. The same, so far, has also been true of Zvyagintsev’s latest, lauded work: Minotaur. He sits before me calm and collected on the couch of a Beverly Hills lobby, just outside of a tastemaker screening of his new movie after earning raves at Cannes, storming Telluride and now entering the American awards race. It’s the kind of trajectory he is familiar with and that has served him well.

Except, beneath the surface, much is also different this time. For the first time, Zvyagintsev made a movie outside of Russia, moving Minotaur’s production to Latvia to stand in for a brutally frank portrait of his homeland at the dawn of the Ukraine war. Minotaur will not be up for the international feature Oscar as Russia’s entry, in turn (both Loveless and Leviathan were Oscar-nominated accordingly), but is instead on the French shortlist, with the committee meeting again this week to make its final decision. Finally, Minotaur arrives after a nearly decade-long gap between films for Zvyagintsev, who, as he told The Hollywood Reporter earlier this year, nearly died of long COVID and could not physically move for a full year.

And so there is some triumph in Zvyagintsev’s very presence here, his ability to carry on his streak of success without missing a beat, despite the obstacles. It’s also a testament to the strength of Minotaur, in many ways a culmination of the master’s career to date. You can watch the trailer for the film exclusively above.

Minotaur is adapted from Claude Chabrol’s 1969 film The Unfaithful Wife, itself previously the source material for Adrian Lyne’s erotic thriller Unfaithful. This version is both cannily faithful to Chabrol — Zvyagintsev tells me he never watched Lyne’s film so as not to muddy the adaptation waters — and urgently updated for the here and now. Zvyagintsev’s story, like Chabrol’s, imagines the tragic fallout of a husband discovering his wife’s infidelity. But, now set in 2022, the drama’s implications speak directly to the place that Zvyagintsev had to leave behind to make the film. (Zvyagintsev, a vocal critic of Russia’s actions in Ukraine, moved to France once the war broke out.) 

From the opening moments, we watch powerful CEO Gleb (Dmitriy Mazurov) tracking the hidden smiles, the secret texts, the afternoon escapes that seem to be consuming his wife, Galina (Iris Lebedeva). But Gleb is being pulled in other directions at the same time, under political pressure to help the mounting war effort. Colleagues are leaving his company, his country, in droves. Zvyagintsev intently places the intimate domestic conflict against the bleak geopolitical backdrop, a hallmark of his filmmaking for decades. Indeed, over a decade ago, Zvyagintsev was called “evil” and “beyond all limits” by Russian officials and activists over the content of Leviathan. 

“Chabrol completely left out life in the office,” Zvyagintsev says, pointing to the most obvious area where he makes his dramatic mark. “What was this relationship that the main character had with his colleagues? What exactly is happening there? I needed to create it.”

The other significant alteration made to the Chabrol source material is that, while Minotaur is mostly seen through the husband’s perspective, Zvyagintsev allows Galina to advocate for herself directly, to say her piece before everything unravels. “I’m tired of being your shadow,” as we hear her say in the trailer.

“She is looking for love, sex, compassion, tenderness,” Zvyagintsev says. “I wanted to show Galina’s tragedy, what exactly was happening with her on the inside — what pushed her to cheat.”

Zvyagintsev argues that Minotaur is not overtly political, but rather the natural setting for his relationship to Chabrol’s story. He was particularly inspired by the centerpiece scene, a wordless sequence that runs for more than 15 minutes and transforms the film in mood and narrative. In Telluride, Zvyagintsev sat in one screening and saw the audience “really reacting” to his take on the scene, and particularly his use of dark, subtle humor. “I didn’t really expect it — at that point, the American audience really started to laugh,” he says. “Just because of the mise-en-scène. And then they laughed again!”

While Zvyagintsev notices Minotaur playing uniquely from place to place, its chilly, incisive power — its brutal commentary on love and betrayal, loyalty and corruption — still resonates on a universal level. It’s the global language through which Zvyagintsev has told his stories over his entire career. He recognizes he may be in a new chapter, consistent as the work remains — a shift represented in many ways by France’s impending decision. 

“I do understand: How will it feel for France to give their place to a Russian director?” Zvyagintsev says. “Me not yet being a French citizen, in the sense [of not having] a passport, but representing them — I would be very proud, and very grateful.” 

Minotaur will be released in theaters on Nov. 20. It premieres Tuesday at the Toronto International Film Festival.