Andrey Zvyagintsev


Andrey Petrovich Zvyagintsev is a Russian film director and screenwriter. His film The Return won him a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Following The Return, Zvyagintsev directed The Banishment and Elena. His film Leviathan was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 2014 and won the Best Film award at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. His most recent film Loveless won the Jury Prize at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, and was among the nominees for Best Foreign Language Film at the 90th Academy Awards. He also won the Achievement in Directing award for this film at the 2017 Asia Pacific Screen Awards.

Life and career

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 Academy 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.
He directed his first feature film The Return, which received several awards, including a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. His second feature film The Banishment premiered at its year's Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for a Palme d'Or. This was followed by "Apocrypha", a short segment for the film New York, I Love You. The segment was eventually cut from the film's theatrical release but is included on the DVD.
Elena, again premiered at Cannes, in the Un Certain Regard section, receiving the festival's Jury Prize.
Leviathan was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or in the main competition section for its year at Cannes, where Zvyagintsev and Oleg Negin won the award for Best Screenplay for the film. Leviathan won the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film and was nominated for the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film. 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 most recent film, Loveless, won the Jury Prize at
Cannes in May 2017. 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 honoured for Leviathan.. In November 2017, the film won three awards at the Golden Unicorn Awards in London: Best Film, Best Screenplay, Best Actress. Loveless was also nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film and Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film. Zvyagintsev won the Achievement in Directing award at the 11th Asia Pacific Screen Awards for Loveless. In March 2018, Loveless won the César Award for Best Foreign Film, making Zvyagintsev the first Russian director to have won this award. In 2018, Zvyagintsev was a jury member of the Cannes Film Festival.

Filmography