Minotaur

A film set in a Russian provincial city. The year is 2022. The war has just begun. Gleb owns a transport company. In his forties, rich and comfortable. He lives with his wife Galina and their teenage son. The house is large. A garden, a pool, two cars. One day the mayor sends for him. There is a demand. A set number of the company's employees will be sent to the front. A quota. Gleb does not object. He will decide who goes. From there the film is a story of selection. He looks at the list. Who has a family, who has debts, who will object, who will not. At the same time a suspicion begins. His wife comes home late. Her phone is locked. Her explanations do not hold. Gleb starts watching her. From there the narrative runs two lines together: a man sending his workers to a war and following his wife. The narrative never connects them. But it is the same man. What the narrative is interested in is not war but scale: its idea is that he decides the lives of dozens of people over a lunch and then becomes fixated on a possibility inside his own house. Personal rage takes him over entirely. He does not care about the quota. He finds a name. There is an encounter. The narrative does not show the violence. It shows the result. From there the film becomes a story of covering up. He has money and connections. He can close a matter of this kind. The mayor helps. In return the quota grows. The ending is entirely dark. The tone is dry. The narrative laughs now and then and the laugh is uncomfortable. The structure comes from a French film. A 1969 production by Claude Chabrol is the source and the plot was carried over from it. Andrey Zvyagintsev's method is evident. Long takes, wide framing, scenes without music and cold colour. The film screened in the main competition at the 79th Cannes Film Festival and won the Grand Prix. Dmitriy Mazurov, Iris Lebedeva and Varvara Shmykova are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes Russian cinema and family drama with a political subtext. Who it is not for: anyone looking for pace; the narrative is very slow and most of what happens happens off screen.