by Alex Billington
May 19, 2026
Whether you like it or not, we live in perilous times. But it still seems hard to talk about this, to talk about what’s broken, what’s happening to humanity, what’s going on all over the world, how rotten it has become. The easiest way to exist peacefully is to shut up, conform to the new rules, do what you’re told, don’t cause any trouble, and just stay in line. And this is what leads us even deeper into the depths of Hell. One of the best films at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival dares to tell an unflinching story about this pervasive moral rot and challenges us to observe how easy it is to lose all your humanity in order to hold on to money & power. Minotaur is the sixth feature film by acclaimed Russian filmmaker Andrey Zvyagintsev and it might be his best yet. This hit me hard and I haven’t stop analyzing it, making sense of it, processing its immensity in the hours since emerging from my screening. Extraordinarily powerful, stomach churning, of-the-moment cinema featuring Tarkovsky-inspired visual intricacy in every shot. Minotaur is a brilliant film about what’s happening Russia –while also a story of what’s happening everywhere around the world if you look closely.
Minotaur (or Минотавр in Russian) is directed by meticulous, masterful filmmaker Andrey Zvyagintsev – who has left Russia and is making films from abroad now as a “foreign agent”. The screenplay is written by Simon Lyashenko and Andrey Zvyagintsev. The film is directly credited a new remake/adaptation of the classic French film The Unfaithful Wife (1969) by Claude Chabrol; which was remade before into Unfaithful in 2022 directed by Adrian Lyne. Zvyagintsev’s Minotaur does repeat the same story again, this time about a CEO of a transportation company in Russia who discovers his wife is cheating on him with a younger man. But that’s only the half of it. Zvyagintsev extends & expands this infidelity story into an especially brave and cinematically complex criticism of Russia’s heinous war in Ukraine that began in 2022. Everything changes he meticulously observes how this effects & destroys this family. It’s much less of a story of a husband & wife as it is a story of greed, power, inhumanity, with a dash of corruption thrown in for good measure. As much as it is specifically about Russia and how horrible things have become since 2022, including focusing on drafting regular people to go be killed on the front lines, it is the same story that can be observed in so many other countries all over the world right now. Which should seriously make anyone feel sick to their stomach.
The Minotaur title is an obvious nod to the Greek mythological monster. According to tradition, the people of Athens were compelled by King Minos to choose 14 young citizens to be offered as sacrificial victims to the Minotaur. It’s connected to a part of the plot where this CEO must pick 14 members of his staff to give to the government to be drafted. In the film, Dmitriy Mazurov stars as the wealthy CEO oligarch Gleb, and Iris Lebedeva as his wife Galina. In addition to characters from The Unfaithful Wife, they also represent the people of Russia. Gleb is a man embodying conformity & active participation in the regime’s evilness: doing what is required of him and never challenging the system because it would mean he might lose all he has gained. Galina represents many other people in Russia – those who look the other way, ignore what is going on, and pretend nothing is happening so as to not disrupt their way of life either. However, this is not just a Russian concept. There are many powerful CEOs in many Western countries also participating in this system of dominance & greed, also willing to sacrifice others in order to maintain power & control over the world. They are the real evil, the decay that’s harming humanity; Zvyagintsev is not afraid to indicate this clearly in his film. The lack of nuance is part of his might – his desire to say to us all, look how bad we are.
The brilliance is not only in this depiction and this story, but in every technical aspect of this film. Working with DP Mikhail Krichman, he crafts every shot with such precision & thematic detail. These frames will be studied for decades after this film is released. It’s no exaggeration to state this is Kubrick or Tarkovsky level composition, with rain and water as a recurring motif connected to Gleb and his downfall. His world begins to melt around him, while his morality drains away. And this is just the start – I’m sure there is more to discover hidden within each shot. The minimalistic score by Evgueni Galperine & Sacha Galperine integrates in the story at just the right moments to make you feel unsettled & uncomfortable. Zvyagintsev feels completely unashamed to boldly say the world is rotten and we must observe it with our own eyes. Yet the film never seems like it wants to keep viewers at arm’s length or come across so off-putting as to be unwatchable. It’s a slow burn thriller, though captivating in every cinematic sense, letting each slow pan in each scene remind us that we’re a part of this same world, too. We must observe carefully what is going on around us whether we want to or not– it is the only way to finally understand and engage with the rotten aspects of society. He throws in a dark twist midway through that might bother some viewers, but I consider it a necessary reminder that this is how horrible many powerful people have become nowadays. It’s so true.
Don’t look away. And don’t pretend this is just a story about Russia. This is not only about saving Ukraine… It’s not even about saving the regular people of Russia. It’s about saving the world. It’s about excavating the rot from every corner of this planet. In the Minotaur myth, the creature was eventually slain by the Athenian hero Theseus, who managed to navigate the labyrinth with the help of a thread offered to him by the King’s daughter, Ariadne. There is hope. It’s especially intriguing that I am not a big fan of Zvyagintsev’s previous films, they’re too cold and unsettling to enjoy properly. Perhaps it’s the modern day setting, perhaps it’s his motivation to be unrestrained in his criticism of the modern Russian regime, perhaps it’s all of this together, but it comes together oh so masterfully. This is truly monumental cinema that will be remembered forever.
Alex’s Cannes 2026 Rating: 9.8 out of 10
Follow Alex on Twitter – @firstshowing / Or Letterboxd – @firstshowing
