The Russian filmmaker, reached by a serious form of COVID-19, settled in France after a coma. His films with dark beauty are broadcast in two cinemas in Paris, from February 16 to 19.
by Jacques Mandelbaum
It’s good time that Russian author’s cinema, which no longer even benefits from the ambiguous support and the prestigious formation provided by the Soviet power, was squandered in the incurse and the inculture of a regime dedicated to enriching a few elites. With the return of the imperialist temptation and the trigger of the war in Ukraine, the last artists who still projected, by one does not know what miracle, the light of their talent on this kingdom of darkness desert it.
While the veteran Alexandre Sokourov (71 years old) is rare in his country, Kirill Serebrennikov (53), Kira Kovalenko (33) or Kantemir Balagov (31 years old) have taken the powder D ‘Escampette, who in Berlin, who in Los Angeles. Among these, there is one who seemed to have lost body and goods, whose name, however, in recent years, has embodied on the international scene the best of the film tradition of his country. It is obviously from Andreï Zviaguintsev (59 years old) that we want to speak, even though man, height of the absurd, has lived in Paris for six months.
filmmaker of evil and dereliction, betrayal of fathers and the suffering of sons, painter of moral decomposition, Tarkovskien without redemption, Andreï Zviaguintsev is the author of five feature films made between 2003 (the return ) and 2017 (lack of love). They are shown in Paris, from Thursday, February 16, in the presence of the author for some of them. You have to run to see them, for their dark beauty, for their majestic grandeur, for the poignant melancholy which embraces our hearts when we leave them. And no less for how, irrefutable, of which they announce what is happening today. Taking advantage of the opportunity, we met this man, proven but standing, worthy in all respects, surviving a series of trials that we find it difficult to imagine.
survivor in foreign land
occupied, since the release of his latest film (lack of love), by two projects that do not succeed – one on the Second World War from the Russian point of view, the other on the problems Family of an oligarch installed on the Côte d’Azur -, Andreï ZviaGuintsev declares, on 1 er July 2021, a form of covid -19 sufficiently serious for being given soon for death. Leaving Russia, where we cannot stem the disease, he entered, in mid-August 2021, in a clinic in Berlin. Immersed in a coma for forty days, he stayed there almost a year, period of time during which his country triggers the war against Ukraine.
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