The Kremlin said director Andrey Zvyagintsev has “no right” to call for an end to Russia’s war with Ukraine.
Zvyagintsev won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival on May 23 for his film Minotavr “Minotaur.” From the stage, he addressed Russia’s president directly, asking that his words be passed on to Vladimir Putin: “Put an end to this carnage. the whole world is waiting for it.”
At a briefing on May 25, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters he personally would not be passing on Zvyagintsev’s words. “I don’t think anyone will be doing that,” he said, adding, according to the Telegram news channel Vy Slushali:
Zvyagintsev never condemned the bloody slaughter that the “Kyiv regime” staged in the Donbas. Starting in 2014, when the war began — if he had been doing that back then, he would probably have had the right to speak. But right now he has no such right.
Peskov also reiterated that the Kremlin has not seen the film Minotavr.
Film critic Anton Dolin wrote in his review on Meduza that ‘Minotaur’ is ‘the first narrative film about Russia in the era of the ”special military operation.”’
Russian TV channels did not report that director Andrey Zvyagintsev received the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival for “Minotaur.”
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