The National Center for Cinema and Animation of France (CNC) said that the film was selected by a special committee of 11 representatives of the film industry, headed by film historian Charles Tesson. The shortlist also included Antonin Baudry’s “Battle of de Gaulle — Iron Age”, Louis Clichy’s “Corset”, Marin Atlan’s “Gradiva”, and Arthur Harari’s “The Stranger”. On September 16, the committee heard from the producers, international sales agents, and American distributors of the five films and then settled on Zvyagintsev’s work.
“Minotaur” is a co-production of France, Latvia, and Germany. The main producers were the French companies CG Cinéma and MK Productions, and the project also involved Latvia’s Forma Pro Films and Germany’s Razor Film Produktion. The film will be released in France on October 14, and its theatrical premiere in the United States is expected.
The film is set in Russia in 2022. The main character, Gleb, is a successful company executive in a provincial city, and his familiar life begins to fall apart amid family and work problems. The film, shot in Latvia, also includes a mobilization storyline: the hero is summoned to the regional administration and told to send workers from his company to war.
In May, “Minotaur” received the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival — the second most important award of the main competition after the Palme d’Or. Accepting the award, Zvyagintsev addressed Vladimir Putin from the stage with a call to end the war.
For Zvyagintsev, this is the first film in nearly ten years since “Loveless”, which was released in 2017. The director left Russia in 2022. This is already his third chance to win an Oscar for Best International Feature Film: in 2015, “Leviathan” was nominated in this category, and in 2018 “Loveless” made it to the final five, but none of these films received the award.
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