After 20 years of ambition, excess and argument, Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s DAU has finally had its official Venice competition premiere. The 195-minute film, about Nobel-winning physicist Lev Landau, arrives as a formidable piece of cinema with an inseparable shadow: the project’s vast scale, reported ethical controversies and Ukraine-related backlash.
The Hollywood Reporter’s review calls the finished film a “considerable artistic achievement,” praising its intimacy as well as its monumental reach. That is no small verdict for a production that began in 2006, was initially budgeted at $3.5 million and ultimately cost roughly ten times that amount.
The film is only one part of a famously sprawling enterprise: 14 planned features and six TV series drawn from 700 hours of 35mm footage, filmed largely in Ukraine with hundreds of actors and thousands of extras. Venice makes DAU, the standalone movie, newly visible. It does not make its history disappear.
Impact assessment
For Venice audiences, the immediate gain is access to a genuine event film: three hours and 15 minutes, including a 15-minute intermission. For Khrzhanovsky and his team, competition placement gives the project its highest-profile platform yet after earlier Berlinale screenings in 2020.
The harder calculation lands with programmers, distributors and independent cinemas. A 195-minute title consumes a large slice of a day’s schedule; controversy consumes a different kind of space, in public discussion and institutional appetite. Analysis: that combination makes DAU more likely to be booked as a deliberate, one-screening occasion than as ordinary repertory fare. The film’s stature may draw adventurous arthouse audiences, but its contested context could narrow the venues willing to make that bet.
Scenarios
Our outlook (informed speculation):
Most likely: If further festival and limited-release bookings follow Venice, DAU becomes a specialized international arthouse event over the next six to 12 months. Its scale and critical interest give programmers a reason to reserve extended slots, while the runtime and controversy keep it out of a broad multiplex pattern. Announced festival dates, named distributors and listings retaining the full 195-minute version would support that path; silence after Venice would weaken it.
Upside: If critics and exhibitors successfully frame the length as part of the attraction, specialty cinemas could turn DAU into a programmed occasion, complete with its intermission and a single extended booking. That would expand access beyond festival regulars and give distributors a reason to support multi-market special screenings. Additional international selections and event-style theatrical dates would be the clearest signs.
Downside: If Ukraine-related backlash and the production’s reported controversies translate into venue decisions, DAU could face a much smaller exhibition route despite its Venice launch. In that case, theatres would avoid the reputational risk and scheduling burden, leaving the finished film with fewer public screenings than its long gestation suggests. Cancellations, withdrawals or public refusals to program it would point in that direction.
What to watch next
The next meaningful signals are practical ones: further festival selections, a distributor or release date, and whether listings preserve the reported 195-minute cut and intermission. Just as important is whether exhibitors publicly connect programming decisions to the backlash surrounding the Russian-made, German-French-Swedish co-production.
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