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, the idealistic Dau is drawn into state service to help create one of history’s deadliest weapons.
Inside a secret research institute, life is governed by scientific ambition, power, surveillance and privilege. As his autonomy erodes, Dau seeks freedom beyond his marriage through a succession of affairs, gradually losing both himself and his capacity to love. The film traces the small compromises that shape a life and alter the course of history.
The film, which runs at a staggering 165 minutes, took dissident director Khrzhanovsky two decades to make. When it was announced that the film would play at the festival, weeks of criticism from activists and Ukrainian officials ensued, prompting fest director Alberto Barbera to defend the selection in a lengthy Instagram message.
“DAU is not a Russian film; it is not pro-Putin propaganda; it is a film of denunciation of totalitarian regimes and their intrusion into the lives of citizens to limit their freedom.”
In a director’s statement, Khrzhanovsky said: “For more than twenty years, I have been aiming at creating a space in which audiences can live an experience rather than observing it from the outside. DAU is the product of it. The starting point was my interest in the human being – in our ability to love, to create and to be free, to make moral choices and to experience happiness in a world where a totalitarian system gradually changes human nature itself.”
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