Acclaimed Russian film director who won 2026 Grand Prix award at Cannes, \u2060has been critical of the war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Published On 18 Sep 202618 Sep 2026<\/p>\n
The winner of a prestigious Cannes Film Festival award has been declared a foreign agent by Russian authorities for his criticism of Moscow\u2019s war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Acclaimed Russian film director \u2060Andrey Zvyagintsev was designated a \u201cforeign agent\u201d by the Kremlin on Friday, according to state news agency \u2060TASS.<\/p>\n
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Zvyagintsev won the 2026 Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival for, Minotaur, a film depicting a Russian businessman who is forced to \u200cdecide which of his employees should be mobilised to go and fight in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
\u201cMillions of people on both sides of the front line dream of only one thing: for the massacres to stop,\u201d Zvyagintsev said in his acceptance speech, adding that Russian President Vladimir Putin was the \u2060only person capable of ending the \u2060war.<\/p>\n
Moscow has kept casualty numbers from the fighting in Ukraine heavily restricted and has not provided timely or complete public updates, but estimates of Russian soldiers killed in the four-year war range from anywhere from 200,000 to half a million.<\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s Ministry of Justice on Friday accused Zvyagintsev of disseminating \u201cfalse information about decisions taken by the public authorities of the Russian Federation and the policies they pursue\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe interacted with foreign agents and resides outside the Russian Federation,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
The 62-year-old director, who has lived outside Russia since the COVID pandemic, \u2060is known for a series of other films including, The Return, The Banishment, and, Leviathan, a bleak \u2060portrayal of life in rural Russia.<\/p>\n
People listed \u2060as foreign agents are subjected to onerous bureaucratic requirements and restrictions on their income in Russia.<\/p>\n
They are barred from holding public office and forced to register their activities with the authorities.<\/p>\n
They also have to add warnings on everything they publish, including \u200con social media, that the content was produced by a foreign agent.<\/p>\n
The label adds connotations of espionage to numerous people, including public figures, whom it deems \u2060to be engaging in anti-Russian activity with support from abroad.<\/p>\n
Previously, writer Boris Akunin and rock musician Boris Grebenshchikov have been labelled as foreign agents by Moscow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Acclaimed Russian film director who won 2026 Grand Prix award at Cannes, \u2060has been critical of the war…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":620370,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[19022,5470,146,20891,63,85,46,4178,43,1593,2388,2460,2637],"class_list":["post-620369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-arts-and-culture","tag-censorship","tag-entertainment","tag-espionage","tag-europe","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-media","tag-news","tag-russia","tag-russia-ukraine-war","tag-social-media","tag-vladimir-putin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=620369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620369\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/620370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}