‘DAU’: First Teaser From Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s Epic Venice Competition Title
The 165-minute film follows physicist Lev Landau and has drawn criticism from activists and Ukrainian officials.
- Ilya Khrzhanovsky's DAU premiered today at the Venice Film Festival, marking the culmination of a 20-year production for the biopic about Nobel Prize-winning quantum physicist Lev Landau.
- Begun 20 years ago, the project ballooned into a massive Soviet-era simulacrum involving thousands of extras; allegations of on-set violence and ethical breaches later emerged during the three-year production.
- The 195-minute film showcases Khrzhanovsky's Truman Show-style approach, requiring cast members to live under constant surveillance to replicate totalitarian constraints and elicit authentic behavioral responses.
- Ukrainian officials and activists criticized the Russian-made feature's selection, prompting Festival director Alberto Barbera to defend it as a denunciation of totalitarian regimes, not propaganda.
- Khrzhanovsky was declared a 'foreign agent' by the Ministry of Justice and has renounced his citizenship, while the film's parallels to current totalitarianism resonate amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
20 Articles
20 Articles
One of the most striking films in the main selection, “Dau” is the culmination of a massive project that Russian-born director Ilya Khrzhanovsky (1975) had been working on for twenty years. This ambitious project, which had previously been presented in various forms in cinemas, theaters, and exhibition spaces using available materials, is now the final stage, transformed into a 195-minute film. A striking aesthetic, wildly mise-en-scene, signifi…
“Dau”, shot between 2008 and 2011 in that city, by filmmaker Ilya Khrzhanovsky, recreates the life of a Nobel Prize winner who was forced to work on the creation of the atomic bomb
The Russian director Ilya Khrzhanovsky completes his mastodontic magna work with a visceral prodigy beyond satire, meat and cinema itself. Next to him, Stéphane Brizé follows his journey through the cracks of capitalism with Un bon petit soldat (***) Read
‘DAU’: First Teaser From Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s Epic Venice Competition Title
EXCLUSIVE: Here’s an exclusive teaser from Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s epic biopic of quantum physicist Lev Lendau, which premiered today in competition at the Venice Film Festival. Inspired by the physicists who built the Soviet atomic bomb, DAU follows the brilliant Greek-born physicist, Lendau, through four tumultuous decades in the USSR. Driven to uncover the laws of the universe, […]
This Wednesday afternoon, in Competition of the 83rd Mostra del Cinema, the Russian filmmaker revealed the ultimate achievement of a crazy film adventure that occupied him for 20 years. And that plunges us back into the atmosphere of the Soviet Union. ...
‘Dau’ Review: After 20 Years of Production, Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s Infamous Mega-Project Comes to a Screeching Halt
After 20 years, “the movie set that ate itself” finally regurgitates its supreme form: a cacophonous, repetitive biopic about Greek-born Soviet physicist Lev Landau (Teodor Currentzis). The three-and-half-hour feature is actually the 14 of its kind — alongside several series and other installations — carved from the sprawling mega-production by director Ilya Khrzhanovsky, whose fully-functioning corner of mid-century Moscow worked day and night,…
Coverage Details
Bias Distribution
- 67% of the sources lean Left
Factuality
To view factuality data please Upgrade to Premium
