Alex moves with his wife Vera and their two children to his parents’ remote country home. In this idyllic setting, she tells him she is pregnant and that the child is not his. Her confession puts their marriage under extreme strain and forces Alex to make a decision whose consequences are becoming increasingly irreversible.

Following his Golden Lion-winning debut, *The Return*, Andrey Zvyagintsev went on to make *The Banishment*, an even more ambitious and enigmatic family drama. Inspired by William Saroyan’s *The Laughing Matter*, the film unfolds as a modern tragedy about love, guilt, jealousy and the inability to truly listen to one another. Zvyagintsev’s monumental visual compositions and Mikhail Krichman’s masterful cinematography make landscapes and architecture characters just as important as the people who lose their way within them.

A visually stunning and uncompromising tragedy in which Zvyagintsev’s cinema finds its monumental form. Interesting fact: the film was shot in various locations across Europe, including Charleroi. Zvyagintsev weaves the diverse locations together into a single timeless, almost biblical world that seems to belong nowhere in particular. Konstantin Lavronenko was awarded Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival for his leading role.

Don’t miss Minotaur and The Return. In December, we show Loveless and Leviathan.