Director Andrey Zvyagintsev’s body did not react to any antibiotic
Photo: Boris KUDRYAVOV
The fact that the famous Russian film director Andrei Zvyagintsev suffered a coronavirus, and in an extremely severe form, has long been known. But now Zvyagintsev shared the details in an interview with Forbes Kazakhstan.
The coronavirus practically destroyed Zvyagintsev’s lungs: they were 92 percent affected. He could only breathe with the help of a ventilator. As a result, on August 17, 2021, he was sent to Germany for a lung transplant (he has not returned to Russia since then). He was in a coma. “I was put into an artificial coma, in which I stayed for 40 days. This could not but affect the peripheral nervous system, coma has such consequences. Also, I had a pulmonary embolism. I collected a complete “bouquet of total horror”, really died and resurrected – at least twice. The doctors thought: everything, this guy is not a tenant, ”Zvyagintsev admitted.
The director’s body did not react to any antibiotic (namely, they cope with bacteria that are especially dangerous for patients with coronavirus). Zvyagintsev says that the case helped: “In the group of my doctors there was a guy from Russia who was very serious about bacteriophages. (They can replace antibiotics, because they also destroy bacteria. – Ed.) He suggested using this method. A low bow to him and to the people who work on bacteriophages in Tbilisi (there is a whole institute there that produces this thing). The doctor who treated me accomplished, in fact, a feat: in Germany, the doctor must strictly follow the treatment protocol; she gave up on this principle and said: let’s try.
Apparently, a lung transplant was still avoided. And this is a great happiness: it is known that only about 50% of people who have undergone such a transplant live longer than five years. But Zvyagintsev spent about a year in bed, lying down, then moved to a wheelchair, and only a few months ago he began to get up from it. Now he is in France. He needs a year or two for rehabilitation (the director specifies that two years from the start of rehabilitation will be only next spring).
Andrey Zvyagintsev was born in Novosibirsk in 1964. He is an actor by education. His directorial debut, The Return, entered the competition at the Venice Film Festival in 2003 and was awarded the top prize, the Golden Lion. The film “Elena” (2011) received a special prize in the program of the Cannes Film Festival “Un Certain Regard”, “Leviathan” (2015) entered the main Cannes competition and received a prize for the screenplay, “Dislike” (2017) was also awarded the Jury Prize there. In addition, “Leviathan” and “Dislike” were nominated for an Oscar in the category “Best Foreign Language Film”. Both tapes received many more prizes. In 2018, Zvyagintsev was a member of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival.
