‘Minotaur’ Trailer: Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Cannes Grand Prix Winner Gets a November Release

Andrey Zvyagintsev has spent his career crafting some of the most quietly devastating portraits of contemporary Russian life on screen, from the Cannes-winning ‘Leviathan’ to the Oscar-nominated ‘Loveless.’ Nearly a decade has passed since that last feature, and the years in between were anything but easy for the filmmaker.

Zvyagintsev was hospitalized in 2021 after a severe reaction to the Sputnik COVID vaccine, spending two weeks in a medically induced coma before facing a year of paralysis tied to Guillain-Barré Syndrome. Around that same period, he left Russia entirely, becoming a vocal critic of the country’s invasion of Ukraine and eventually settling in France, a personal and political upheaval that shaped the making of his long-awaited return to filmmaking.

That return has now arrived with real momentum behind it. ‘Minotaur,’ Zvyagintsev’s first film shot entirely outside Russia, using Latvia as a stand-in for the country he left behind, won the Grand Prix at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, and distributor MUBI has now released a new trailer ahead of the film’s theatrical release on November 20.

Loosely adapted from Claude Chabrol’s “The Unfaithful Wife,” the film is set in Russia in 2022 and follows Gleb, a transport company CEO played by Dmitriy Mazurov, who lives a comfortable life with his wife Galina, played by Iris Lebedeva, and their teenage son. As the film opens, Gleb is tasked by the town’s mayor with drafting a quota of his own employees to send off to the ongoing war, all while growing suspicious that Galina is having an affair, a discovery that pushes him toward increasingly drastic action.

The trailer for Andrey Zvyagintsev’s ‘MINOTAUR’ has been released.

Winner of the Grand Prix at the 79th Cannes Film Festival.

In theaters this November. pic.twitter.com/tpjwQm1ERX

— Film Updates (@FilmUpdates) September 14, 2026

Zvyagintsev has been candid about just how uncertain his path back to filmmaking once looked. Speaking with IndieWire during this year’s Cannes festival, where ‘Minotaur’ claimed the Grand Prix, he admitted he didn’t know if he would ever walk again or return to living life normally, acknowledging that some lingering effects from his illness remain with him even now.

The film also marks a deliberate departure from a strictly one-sided perspective on its central marriage. While the story is largely seen through Gleb’s eyes, Zvyagintsev made space for Galina to advocate for herself directly before the situation unravels completely. Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, he explained that he wanted to show Galina’s own internal tragedy, exploring what was happening inside her that ultimately pushed her toward the affair, rather than simply serving as a plot device.

Zvyagintsev has also addressed the possibility that ‘Minotaur’ could represent France in the international feature race at the Oscars, marking a first for the director after previous submissions from Russia for both ‘Leviathan’ and ‘Loveless.’ He’s said he would feel proud and grateful if chosen for that honor, a fitting possibility given how thoroughly his personal and professional life has shifted since he left the country his earlier films were so closely tied to.

Since its Cannes premiere, ‘Minotaur’ has continued its awards-season journey through Telluride, Toronto, and an upcoming bow at the New York Film Festival, following a similar trajectory to Zvyagintsev’s previous festival successes. With MUBI now backing its theatrical rollout across North America, the UK, Ireland, Germany, Austria, and Latin America, the film looks positioned to reach one of the director’s widest audiences yet.

At 141 minutes, the film doesn’t shy away from the slow-burning, methodical pacing that’s defined much of Zvyagintsev’s earlier work, continuing his longtime collaboration with cinematographer Mikhail Krichman and production designer Andrey Ponkratov. Early reviews out of Cannes have praised the film’s unflinching tone, with critics describing it as a razor-sharp portrait of corruption operating on personal, patriarchal, and governmental levels all at once.

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