Andrey Zvyagintsev ‘s Leviathan , which won best screenplay at Cannes , raised eyebrows all over Hollywood when it was chosen as Russia’s submission for the 2015 foreign-language Oscar. “We took this decision in favor of the Leviathan movie with a majority of votes,” director and Russian Oscar committee member Pavel Chukhrai said. The choice is startling because the critically adored film is literally iconoclastic, with a scene of drunk cops shooting up Russian leaders’ portraits with AK-47s, joking about whether it was time to shoot Putin ‘s.
