Andrey Zvyagintsev's film "Minotaur" received the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival

The second most important prize at the 79th Cannes Film Festival was awarded to the film “Minotaur” by Russian director Andrei Zvyagintsev. This was announced at the closing ceremony of the film festival.

Receiving the award, Andrei Zvyagintsev addressed Vladimir Putin in his acceptance speech and asked him to stop the war.

“There is one person to whom I would like to address my words today on my own behalf. He doesn't use a VPN to watch this ceremony live. I’m sure he has a much more important question to solve now, but I know that there are people around him who know how to convey these words to him. And these are the words. Millions of people on both sides of the contact line now dream of only one thing. So that the countless killings of people can finally stop. And the only person who can stop this meat grinder is you, Mr. President of the Russian Federation. End this carnage already. The whole world is waiting for this,” said Andrey Zvyagintsev.

“Minotaur” is Zvyagintsev’s first film since 2017. It was filmed in Latvia in Russian. The plot basis is borrowed from Claude Chabrol - this is a new interpretation of the 1969 film “The Unfaithful Wife”.

Zvyagintsev and his new co-author Semyon Lyashenko are reassembling the story in such a way that from being very French it becomes very native - a story of the year 2022, the time of “SVO” and mobilization.

The winner of the main prize at the Cannes Film Festival, the Palme d'Or, was the drama Fjord by Romanian director Cristian Mungiu.

The Jury Prize was awarded to Valeska Grisebach for her film “Dream Adventure”. It also became known that the prize for best director was shared by Pavel Pawlikowski, who directed “Fatherland”, and the authors of the film “Black Ball”, Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi.

The award for best screenplay went to Emmanuel Marre, director and screenwriter of the film “A Man of His Time.” The prize for best actor was awarded to Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagna for the film “The Coward” by Lukas Dhont. The award for Best Actress went to Virginie Efire and Tao Okamoto, who starred in Suddenly by Ryusuke Hamaguchi.