Honored at Cannes, this Russian filmmaker calls on Putin to “end the carnage”
The powerful speech from Andreï Zviaguintsev, who received the Grand Prix of this 79th edition last night for Minotaure.
Honored last night on the Croisette, Andreï Zviaguintsev took advantage of his appearance on the stage of the Palais des Festivals to send a direct message to Vladimir Putin.
The Russian filmmaker, awarded the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival for Minotaurdelivered a speech as political as it was moving, greeted by a long ovation from the public.
Exiled since the invasion of Ukraine, the director of lack of love And Leviathan sign with Minotaur a dark and stifling drama which transposes the spirit of The Unfaithful Wife of Chabrol in the Russia of 2022, at the heart of the war. The film follows a husband ready to descend into violence after discovering his wife’s adultery, while Russian society descends into fear, corruption and forced recruitment.
Through this mechanism of intimate revenge, Zvyagintsev x-rays the moral excesses of a Russia at war: impunity, cynicism, permanent arrangements and ordinary brutality become the symptoms of a corrupt system. All carried by an icy staging. But it was especially his acceptance speech that marked the ceremony. Weighing each of his words, the filmmaker launched a solemn appeal to the Russian president:
“Millions of people on both sides of the front line dream of only one thing: for the massacres to finally stop. And the only person who can put an end to this butchery is the President of the Russian Federation. Put an end to this carnage. The whole world is waiting for this.”
