Minotaur (Russian: Минотавр) is a 2026 Russian-language political thriller drama film directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev, co-written with Simon Liashenko and based on the 1969 French film The Unfaithful Wife by Claude Chabrol. In the backdrop of the Russo-Ukrainian war, broken business executive Gleb (Dmitriy Mazurov) discovers his wife Galina (Iris Lebedeva) has been unfaithful.
The film had its world premiere in the main competition of the 79th Cannes Film Festival on 19 May 2026, where it won the Grand Prix and Cannes Soundtrack Award. It will be theatrically released in France by Les Films du Losange on 14 October.
Contents
Premise
Set against the backdrop of a provincial Russian small town in 2022, it follows business executive Gleb, who is on the verge of laying off his employees when he discovers his wife is having an affair.
Cast
Iris Lebedeva as Galina
Dmitriy Mazurov as Gleb
Varvara Shmykova as Natasha
Juris Žagars
Anatoliy Beliy
Artur Smolyaninov
Vladimir Friedman as the mayor
Anastasia Mischenko as Dasha
Yuriy Zavalnyouk as Anton
Production
Development
Minotaur is a co-production between France, Latvia and Germany, produced by MK Production (the production arm of mk2 Films), Charles Gillibert's CG Cinéma and Zvyagintsev, in association with Arte France Cinéma and Leaf Entertainment, with Germany's Razor Film and Latvia's Forma Pro Films co-producing.
Following his long battle against COVID-19, Zvyagintsev moved from Moscow to France in 2022, where he began pre-production on an unrealized project about a Russian oligarch, Jupiter. This film was ultimately shelved after failing to gain financing. By early 2025, pre-production began for Zvyagintsev's new script, Minotaur, which would focuses on a Russian privileged elite oligarch.
Filming
Principal photography began in September 2025 in Riga, Latvia. Production wrapped by late November 2025. Zvyagintsev re-teamed with his longtime partners, cinematographer Mikhail Krichman and production designers Andrey Ponkratov and Masha Slavina.
Release
In March 2026, it was reported that Mubi had acquired distribution rights for North and Latin America, the UK, Ireland, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Les Films du Losange will release the film in France in late 2026, with mk2 Films handling sales elsewhere. It will be theatrically released in France by Les Films du Losange on 14 October. Falcon Pictures acquired Indonesian rights to the film.
The film had its world premiere in the main competition of the 79th Cannes Film Festival on 19 May 2026, where it won the Grand Prix and Cannes Soundtrack Award. It went on to win the Sydney Film Prize at the 73rd Sydney Film Festival, with the Kleber Mendonça Filho-led jury hailing it as a "chronicle of contemporary Russia" that felt "strongly Hitchcockian, strongly cinematic." It was screened at the Coca-Cola Open Air Cinema at the 32nd Sarajevo Film Festival, in the Open Air section on 21 August 2026. It had its North American premiere at 53rd Telluride Film Festival, and was also selected for the Main Slate of the 2026 New York Film Festival.
Reception
Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 98% of 41 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.4/10. Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 91 out of 100, based on 13 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".
In his five-star review, Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian called the film "tremendous", specifically commending Zvyagintsev's direction as "superb" and Mazurov and Lebedeva's performances as "outstanding".
Accolades
The film is one of five shortlisted by the French Ministry of Culture and was one of eleven shortlisted by the German Films to be France's and German's submission to the 99th Academy Awards for Best International Feature Film respectively.
