Cannes Grand Prix Winner Andrey Zvyagintsev Uses Acceptance Speech to Address Putin: ‘Put an End to This Carnage’

May 24, 2026 8:28am PT Cannes Grand Prix Winner Andrey Zvyagintsev Uses Acceptance Speech to Address Putin: ‘Put an End to This Carnage’

By Naman Ramachandran

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Naman Ramachandran

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Standing at the Cannes podium Saturday night to collect the Grand Prix for “Minotaur,” exiled Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev used his acceptance speech to issue a direct, personal plea to Vladimir Putin to bring the war to an end.

Set in Russia in 2022, “Minotaur” follows Gleb (Dmitriy Mazurov), a successful company director whose carefully ordered life unravels under mounting corporate pressures and an increasingly volatile world, the disintegration tipping toward violence. The French-German-Latvian co-production marks Zvyagintsev’s first feature in close to a decade, reuniting him with cinematographer Mikhail Krichman and production designer Andrey Ponkratov. Iris Lebedeva also stars.

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