The Return

The Return, the first feature from director Andrei Zvyagintsev, has won a clutch of awards, including the Golden Lion at Venice. Zvyagintsev talks to Carol Murphy in his only Irish interview.

Ivan and Andrey's father is a stranger. He returns to the life that these adolescents live with their mother in a remote rural town in contemporary Russia after and unexplained absence of twelve years. Their memory of the man who calls himself their father is encapsulated in a tired, worn photograph. They have no recollection of the disciplinarian who decides to take them on a fishing trip to a remote island. Ivan and Andrey inhabit either pole of a loving/antagonistic relationship with their taciturn father; resulting in a tense struggle with nature and destiny, and an Oedipal clash of personalities and responsibilities. The pace and rhythm of the film combined with the apparent simplicity of its structure and style gives breathing space to powerful performances from the late Vladimir Garin and Ivan Dobronravov as the young brothers. The tension is sustained throughout due to the fact that we are never quite aware of the intent or even identity of the father, which Zvyagintsev holds very close to his chest like a jealous child.

The Return is remote, dark and exquisite. Winner of last year's Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival, it is the most sought after Russian feature by a first-time film director in the past eleven years. European and US film distributors have been scrambling over each other ot get their hands on it – and for good reason. This is a tremendously assured film for a first feature, however trying to get Andrei Zvyagintsev's consent to commit to verbal discourse about it is another thing entirely.

CM: This is a tremendously assured film for a first feature. How have you found the shift from directing for TV to directing for film?

AZ: Well I didn't do proper television stuff because I only did three short episodes for television, and even then I was thinking that I was making cinema. I approached it like cinema.

You trianed as an actor, so did you always want to direct?

I was dreaming of it for a long time. It took me ten years and I did not have a direct route, so it was a round way.

The full article is printed in Film Ireland 99