Andrey Zvyagintsev

Andrey Petrovich Zvyagintsev (Russian: Андре́й Петро́вич Звя́гинцев, pronounced [ˈzvʲæɡʲɪntsɨf]; born 6 February 1964) is a Russian filmmaker. His debut film, The Return (2003), won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Leviathan (2014) and Loveless (2017), won him Best Screenplay and the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival,^[1][2] respectively. Both films were nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film, representing Russia.

Zvyagintsev was born in Novosibirsk, Siberia. At the age of 20 in 1984, he graduated from the theater school in Novosibirsk as an actor. Since 1986, he has lived in Moscow where he continued his studies at the Russian Institute of Theatre Arts until 1990. From 1992 to 2000, he worked as an actor for film and theater. In 2000, he began to work for the TV station REN TV and directed three episodes of the television series The Black Room.

His directing debut feature film, The Return (2003), about two teenager boys and their estranged father, had its world premiere at the main competition of the 60th Venice International Film Festival, where it won the Golden Lion. It was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film. It was also selected as the Russian entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 76th Academy Awards, but was not nominated.

His second feature film, The Banishment (2007), had its world premiere at the main competition of the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, where it was nominated for the Palme d'Or and won the Best Actor award.^[3]

His 2011's Elena (2011), had its world premiere at the Un Certain Regard section of the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Special Jury Prize.^[4][5] It also won the Grand Prix at Film Fest Gent.

His fourth feature film, Leviathan (2014), had its world premiere at the main competition of the 2014 Cannes Film Festival,^[6] where it was nominated for the Palme d'Or and won the Best Screenplay award.^[1] It was nominated for the Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film and the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film representing Russia. It also won the award for Best Film at the 8th Asia Pacific Screen Awards. In 2015, Zvyagintsev was a jury president of the 18th Shanghai International Film Festival.

His fifth feature film, Loveless (2017), had its world premiere at the main competition of the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, where it was nominated for the Palme d'Or and won the Jury Prize.^[2] It later won the Best Film at the 2017 London Film Festival, making him the second director to have won the award twice, having previously been honored for Leviathan.^[7] In November 2017, the film won three awards at The Golden Unicorn Awards in London: Best Film, Best Screenplay, Best Actress.^[8] It was also nominated for the Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film and the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film representing Russia. Zvyagintsev won the Achievement in Directing award at the 11th Asia Pacific Screen Awards for Loveless.^[9] In March 2018, it won the César Award for Best Foreign Film, making Zvyagintsev the first Russian director to win it. In 2018, Zvyagintsev was a jury member of the Cannes Film Festival.

At the time of his serious illness and long-term hospitalization in mid-2021 Zvyagintsev was working on his English-language feature-length debut, What Happened. The film has been on hiatus since his hospitalization.

In 2023 Zvyagintsev moved to France where he began pre-production on an as-yet unrealized project about a Russian oligarch, Jupiter.^[10] This film was shelved and another, entitled Minotaur, concerning a Russian entrepreneur named Gleb, went into production instead.^[11]

Andrei Zvyantsev's first wife was the actress Irina Grinyova; the two divorced after six years of marriage. His second wife is the film editor Anna Matveeva.^[12][13] They have a son, Pyotr (born in 2009).^[14][15]

In June 2021, Zvyagintsev received the Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine. He soon developed a high fever and was taken to a Moscow hospital, where he was admitted to intensive care. During his hospital stay he developed nosocomial sepsis from an antibiotic-resistant infection contracted while under Russian medical care.^[16][17][18] He was transferred to a German hospital, where he was placed into an artificial coma. After Zvyagintsev's coma was lifted he developed a polyneuropathy that caused him to lose the ability to walk. In addition to paraplegia, the director could neither sit up nor speak as his throat ligaments had been injured. At one point his lungs' capacity to exchange gasses had fallen by 92% and Zvyagintsev's circulatory system was diverted into an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machine (ECMO).^[19] In all, Zvyagintsev was hospitalized for eleven months. He was discharged in May of 2022 from a hospital in Wiesbaden, Germany.^[16][17][18]

• The Black Room (TV series, 2000)
• New York, I Love You ("Apocrypha" segment, 2009) – segment cut from theatrical release
• Experiment 5IVE ("Mystery" segment, 2011)

In Russian dark comedy series The Last Minister Alexander Gorchilin plays an alternate reality version of Zvyagintsev^[20] who's kidnapped by a secret government agency and forced to make a sequel to Leviathan as part of a psyop to bolster Russia's reputation as world's bleakest and scariest country.

• List of Russian Academy Award winners and nominees

• Official website
• Andrey Zvyagintsev at IMDb