Loveless
As a Moscow couple tear through a bitter divorce, each already moving on to someone new, their unwanted twelve-year-old son disappears.
Cannes Film Festival, Jury Prize, 2017
A Moscow couple grind through a venomous divorce, both already attached to new partners and neither wanting custody of their twelve year old son. The boy, who has overheard their contempt, vanishes, and the frantic search exposes how little room either parent had left for him.
The film shows the child as the casualty of withdrawn love, parental narcissism, and a couple's inability to mourn anything, including their own emptiness. It gives a therapist a bleak, precise account of what happens to a child no one has space to hold. It won the Jury Prize at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival.
Director
Andrey Zvyagintsev
Andrey Zvyagintsev (born 1964) is a Russian film director. His work returns repeatedly to the absent or returning father, to the pressure of authority, and to the family set against the Russian state. He often places private grief inside institutions that fail the people caught in them. His debut feature, The Return (2003), follows two boys whose father reappears after a long absence; it won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Later films include Leviathan and Loveless.
Details
- 2017
- Russia
- Russian
- Film