Andrey Zvyagintsev's film Leviathan is not just a "film", but a truly major event in Russian cinema, one of the greatest creative successes of the new century. Having caused heated debates in its homeland, which have not subsided even years after the premiere, the film received the widest international recognition: from the Cannes Film Festival award for best screenplay to a nomination for an Oscar. Film critic Maxim Markov set himself the goal of revealing the secret of this success - and decided to ask the director himself about all the nuances of the creation of Leviathan. The conversation was based on the principle of an almost second-by-second analysis of the film with the central, constantly repeating question: why was this shot shot this way and not another? Why did the director choose this particular angle, this particular size? Did he control every actor's gesture, every camera movement, or was there room for improvisation, and perhaps even for chance?.. In other words, what was done to make literally every frame of the film unique?

Six days of conversations included a detailed story not only about one specific film, but about the entire creative kitchen of Andrey Zvyagintsev. The world-famous director gave a truly unique master class, telling in maximum detail about the methods of his work - about how the script is created, how the visual solution and the material world of the future film are discussed during the preparatory period, how relationships with actors are built on the set... At the same time, the conversation could not help but turn to life in Russia, the position of man in the world, life values ​​and ideals - about everything that Leviathan itself talks about. The result was not just a “technical” analysis of the film, which would be of interest only to professionals, but a deep, very personal interview with a bright, talented person who worries about his characters to the same extent as he worries about all his compatriots.