‘Loveless’ Trailer: Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Searing Oscar Contender

When you poke the sleeping dragon that is the Russian government, you might get burned. Andrey Zvyagintsev has managed to find a balance, critiquing the state, while making films like “Leviathan” that gain critical support and Oscar contention. However, for his new film “Loveless,” he didn’t get funding from the government, and turned elsewhere. Nevertheless, the picture was selected as the country’s Oscar entry this year.

“Russia is a huge country with many people and many stories, and we tell them as we see them. The one thing that changed with ‘Loveless’ is we didn’t have any state financing. Our experience with ‘Leviathan’ was too troublesome. But that was our decision—we never even applied for any state grants this time. I just continue to do what I always do. Continue to move forward without looking back, without any kind of self-censorship,” Zvyagintsev told Deadline.

Indeed, “Loveless” doesn’t hold back at all, with Jessica Kiang describing the picture, about a boy who goes missing in the midst of a heated divorce, “a feelbad film of gargantuan reach and effect.” Here’s the official synopsis:

In LOVELESS, Zhenya and Boris are going through a vicious divorce marked by resentment, frustration and recriminations. Already embarking on new lives, each with a new partner, they are impatient to start again, to turn the page – even if it means threatening to abandon their 12-year-old son Alyosha. Until, after witnessing one of their fights, Alyosha disappears.

“Loveless” opens on February 16, 2018.