Andrey Zvyagintsev’s “Minotaur” — the exiled Russian filmmaker’s long-awaited return to cinema after nearly a decade — has won the Sydney Film Prize at the closing ceremony of the 73rd Sydney Film Festival.
The $60,000 award, presented to the most “audacious, cutting-edge and courageous” film in competition on Sunday night, was judged by an international jury led by Brazilian Oscar-nominated director Kleber Mendonça Filho. In awarding the prize, the jury called “Minotaur” a film about power “used to crush people,” praising its Hitchcockian grip and describing it as “a chronicle of contemporary Russia.”
A French-Latvian-German co-production shot in Latvia, the political thriller follows a broken company director whose domestic crisis unfolds against the backdrop of the Russo-Ukrainian war. It marks Zvyagintsev’s first feature since 2017’s “Loveless,” and comes after the director spent nearly a year hospitalised following a severe COVID-19 illness that damaged 92% of his lungs.
Accepting the prize in person at the State Theatre, Zvyagintsev said: “I would like to thank the jury for this decision, because this film means a lot to people who are struggling at the moment in Russia. The Russian language is struggling. This film is very important to them.”
“Minotaur” had already won the Grand Prix at Cannes 2026 before its Australian premiere at SFF. The film reunites Zvyagintsev with longtime collaborators including cinematographer Mikhail Krichman.
The closing night ceremony preceded the Australian premiere of James Gray’s family thriller “Paper Tiger,” capping what Festival CEO Frances Wallace declared the highest-selling edition in the festival’s 73-year history. Attendance is projected at 170,000 — a 10% increase on 2025’s 157,000 — with Youth Pass sales up more than 30%.
New Zealand and Australian filmmakers Mataslia Freshwater and Lachlan McLeod took out the $40,000 Sustainable Future Award — the world’s largest environmental film prize — for “Sukundimi Walks Before Me,” a documentary following an Indigenous PNG community’s campaign to protect the Sepik River from a proposed mining project. The $20,000 Documentary Australia Award went to Australian filmmaker Vee Shi for “Time and Tide,” a hybrid docu-drama about a multigenerational family navigating the pressures of familial obligation.
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Banchi Hanuse claimed the $35,000 First Nations Award, proudly supported by Truant Pictures and the world’s largest cash prize in Indigenous filmmaking, for “Ceremony,” a hybrid documentary tracing memory, ceremony and the legacy of colonialism across Nuxalk lands. Writer/director Fadia Abboud received the $10,000 Sydney-UNESCO City of Film Award from Screen NSW.
Among the Dendy Awards for Australian Short Films, Siena Mayutu Wumarri Stubbs won the Live Action Short Award for “Maŋutji (Catching Eyes),” while “Our Choir Has Always Been Travelling” — directed by Judith Pungarta Inkamala, Marjorie ‘Nunga’ Williams and Nelson Armstrong — took the Yoram Gross Animation Award and the Event Cinemas Rising Talent Award for Screenwriting. Cristabel Sved won the Rouben Mamoulian Award for Best Director for “Date 3,” and production designers Angelina Kovacs and Sophie Ravant received the AFTRS Craft Award for “Flesh Fruit.”