Exiled Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev has expressed his pleasure at being back at the Cannes Film Festival with Palme d’Or contender Minotaur after a near decade absence .

“It’s one of the greatest things that’s happened to me over these last nine years. Coming back after such a lengthy absence to the Cannes Film Festival once again is an absolutely incomparable event and I am sure you understand that,” he told the press conference for the film on Wednesday.

Zvyagintsev was last in Cannes with his penultimate film Loveless in 2017 which won the Jury Prize and went on to nominated for an Oscar. He has had a torrid time in between. He nearly died from Covid during the pandemic and then found himself living in exile in France after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

His new films taps into the mood in his native Russia in 2022 with a twist-laden tale of privilege, betrayal, jealously, primordial survival instinct and compromise in a Russian provincial city.

Dmitriy Mazurov plays successful company director Gleb, whose seemingly perfect life starts to unravel amid the early days of Russia’s war in Ukraine, not necessarily due to the conflict but rather his suspicions that his wife (Iris Lebedeva) is having an affair.

The director told the press conference that he still felt qualified to tell a story set in the country, in spite of his more than six-year absence from his native Russia,

“I may have left Russia but I previously spent 60 years there. I know how the people think, how they react, how they go about things. I know a lot about corruption too, which is highly developed in the country,” he said.

“I’m familiar with all the aspects… I perhaps lost a link when I left Russia six years ago, but I know what I’m talking about.”