‘Minotaur,’ Scathing Look at Corruption and Infidelity in Putin’s Russia, Electrifies Cannes With 8-Minute Standing Ovation

By Brent Lang

Brent Lang

Executive Editor

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“Minotaur,” a pitch-black look at corruption in Putin era Russia, was greeted with a thunderous, eight-minute standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday.

The film marks the return to the Croisette of Andrey Zvyagintsev, the Oscar-nominated auteur, whose previous films, “The Banishment,” “Leviathan” and “Loveless” also bowed at Cannes. Zvyagintsev, his eyes misting as the applause in the Lumière Theatre kept building, was flanked by the film’s stars Dmitriy Mazurov and Iris Lebedeva, who play a couple whose marriage is rocked by infidelity and deception. They were also joined in the auditorium by Boris Kudrin, who plays their teenage son Seryozha — at one point Mazurov tousled Kudrin’s hair.

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