The Kremlin said that director Andrey Zvyagintsev “has no right” to call for an end to Russia’s war with Ukraine.
On May 23, Zvyagintsev received the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival for the film “Minotaur”. The director addressed the President of the Russian Federation from the stage and asked him to convey the following words to Vladimir Putin: “Stop this massacre already. The whole world is waiting for it.”
At a press conference on May 25, Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov told reporters that he personally would not relay Zvyagintsev’s words. “I don’t think anyone would do that,” he said, adding (quoted on “Have You Been Listening”):
Zvyagintsev never condemned the bloodbath perpetrated by the Kiev regime in Donbass. Starting in 2014, when the war started, if he had done so then, he likely would have had the right to vote. But now he has no such right.
Peskov also confirmed that the Kremlin had not watched the movie “Minotaur.”
In his review of Medusa, film critic Anton Dolin wrote that Minotaur is “the first feature film about Russia in the ‘special military operation’ era.”
Russian TV channels did not say that director Andrei Zvyagintsev won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival for the movie “Minotaur.”