TSPDT

Key Production Country: Russia
Key Genres: Drama, Family Drama, Rural Drama, Psychological Drama, Coming-of-Age, Road Movie
Key Collaborators: Oleg Negin (Screenwriter), Mikhail Krichman (Cinematographer), Anna Mass (Editor), Andrey Ponkratov (Production Designer), Alexander Rodnyansky (Producer), Aleksey Rozin (Leading Character Actor), Andrey Dergachev (Composer), Konstantin Lavronenko (Leading Actor), Elena Lyadova (Leading Actress), Sergey Melkumov (Producer), Philip Glass (Composer)

"Andrey Zvyagintsev makes heavyweight political dramas that move smoothly, hit hard and leave colourful bruises. His subject is a broken system, a lawless land, and so he fills his stories with scheming politicians and downtrodden victims. The bus shelters are festooned with missing person posters, a dead dog hangs in the boughs of a blighted city tree and the court officials pass judgment in such a rapid-fire monotone that the words lose all meaning. His films tell us that hell exists – and that its name is modern Russia." - Xan Brooks (The Guardian, 2018)

"Any Russian director should expect to be compared with Tarkovsky, not least one who works, as Andrey Zvyagintsev does, with abundant natural imagery – desolate trees, expanses of icy water… Zvyagintsev tends to harness his philosophical points to commentary about modern Russia – and the world in general – and it should not be interpreted as a slight on either film-maker that the description of him as “Tarkovsky with a plot” has now entered circulation.." - Ryan Gilbey (New Statesman, 2018)

"Zvyagintsev is a precise, formal and classical filmmaker. Every shot is perfectly composed and replete with meaning." - Kaleem Aftab (The Independent, 2018)

"Few living filmmakers put as much care and intentionality into their storytelling craft as the emergent Russian master Andrey Zvyagintsev. In five features over 15 years, his has been a cinema of significant shots and committed cuts, each choice weighed and weighted, every detail freighted with meaning. Such determination risks stultification, but even that notion’s been worked over and woven into Zvyagintsev’s project, in which even the most willful of people come to suspect that a course has already been set, that there’s a frame around their lives, and it’s a heavy one." - Eric Hynes (Film Comment, 2018)

"Not far removed from the philosophical and ethical inquiries that 19th century literary masters like Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Dostoyevsky debated in their written works, director Andrey Zvyagintsev confronts modern Russia’s vices and virtues through delicately stylized realism. He is one of the country’s most internationally esteemed filmmakers since Tarkovsky, but has had the unique burden of portraying hot-button issues in Putin’s Russia. A Golden Globe to his name, an Oscar nomination, and Cannes’ eternal praises appear to have served as a strong shield from censorship." - Carlos Aguilar (MovieMaker, 2017)

"Born in Siberia, Zvyagintsev was an obscure theater and television director until The Return (2003) won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Hailed as an heir to Andrei Tarkovsky, Zvyagintsev followed up his acclaimed debut film with The Banishment (2007), a critically spurned melodrama based on a William Saroyan novel. Most critics regarded Elena (2011), a marital drama that highlighted class disparities in contemporary Russia, as at least a partial return to form." - Michael Guillén (Cineaste, 2014)