Returning to Cannes after nine years, Zvyagintsev was awarded the Grand Prix for Minotaur. The film depicts a successful businessman who believes he has firm control over his life, who runs headlong into the fissures of the world around him. Zvyagintsev’s dramas always begin from the domain of family before arriving at religious and mythic horizons, and this new film, while carrying mythic overtones in its very title, keeps its feet firmly planted on real ground. In its extended crime sequence, it is as accessible as a Chabrol thriller, while in exposing troubling wartime conditions it holds fast to political critique. If the premise sounds familiar, you’ll instead feel the film’s temperature steadily rising. His characteristically cool touch remains intact, yet the film’s intense pull draws you into a feverish rhythm all the same. The word ‘Minotaur’ usually conjures a monster trapped in a labyrinth. But in truth, the labyrinth is nothing other than a trap laid by human beings themselves, and those scarred by that trap ultimately turn into monsters. The journey to cloud-covered Crete bears this out. (LEE Yong Cheol)