Minotaur

There are no front lines in Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Minotaur. Instead, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine makes itself felt through dinner conversations, workplace decisions and the increasingly uncomfortable responsibilities of an otherwise prosperous businessman. Loosely adapted from Claude Chabrol’s The Unfaithful Wife, the film transplants a familiar tale of marital suspicion to provincial Russia in 2022, where the political situation is proving rather more difficult to ignore than its wealthy inhabitants might like.

Among the affluent acquaintances of Gleb (Dmitriy Mazurov), who runs a successful tech company, the war is seen as a temporary inconvenience. Some plan to wait it out in Southeast Asia, while others confidently predict that the whole thing will soon blow over. Gleb’s comfortable detachment becomes harder to maintain when he is ordered to supply 14 employees for military service. His attempts to buy his way out of the situation prove unsuccessful, and the ensuing search for a solution takes on a distinctly Gogolian tone. What ought to be a profound moral dilemma is approached as an administrative headache, with the prospect of sending men to their deaths treated almost as a staffing problem.

Meanwhile, Gleb’s growing suspicions that his wife, Galina (Iris Lebedeva), is having an affair introduce a more conventional element of psychological suspense. The camera lingers over their sleek modernist house, with its cool lighting, immaculate marble and sparsely furnished rooms, looking more like an architectural showpiece than somewhere a family actually lives. Zvyagintsev has a particular talent for observing his characters from a distance, drawing out the discomfort in exchanges that might otherwise seem unremarkable. Mazurov’s portrayal is particularly effective in its restraint, giving Gleb enough humanity to prevent him from becoming a caricature, even as his actions grow more reprehensible. 

For all its political implications, Minotaur is just as compelling as a psychological thriller. Zvyagintsev places Chabrol’s marital intrigue alongside the absurdities of wartime bureaucracy, allowing the two narratives to develop in parallel. The result preserves the suspense of the original while taking the story in a considerably more disturbing direction.

Christina Yang

Minotaur is released nationwide on 28^th November 2026.

Read more reviews from our London Film Festival 2026 coverage here.

For further information about the event, visit the London Film Festival website here.

Watch the trailer for Minotaur here: