- Some of his favorite films are L'Avventura (1960), La Notte (1961), L'Eclisse (1962), Last Tango in Paris (1972), A Man Escaped (1956), Diary of a Country Priest (1951), Wild Strawberries (1957), Autumn Sonata (1978), Andrei Rublev (1966), Mirror (1975), Ordet (1955), The Child (2005), Husbands (1970), The Lovers (1958), Woman in the Dunes (1964), Trial on the Road (1986), Falling Leaves (1966), Seven Samurai (1954), My Night at Maud's (1969), Breaking the Waves (1996), The White Ribbon (2009), Koyaanisqatsi (1982), Alice in the Cities (1974), and Bicycle Thieves (1948).
- Was a street janitor after graduating GITIS for 3 years.
- Some of his favorite filmmakers are Ingmar Bergman, Robert Bresson, Michelangelo Antonioni, Andrei Tarkovsky, Otar Iosseliani, Aleksey German, Marlen Khutsiev. Antonioni had the most profound influence on him: He said that seeing Antonioni's L'Avventura (1960) gave him a 'new life' and he wanted to become a filmmaker.
- Considers Fyodor Dostoevsky to be a very important figure in his life. He stated that he was in love with Dostoevsky's works, reading only this author for many years.
- His second feature The Banishment (2007) (The Banishment) premiered at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival and surprisingly won the Best Leading Actor Award for Konstantin Lavronenko who previously starred in The Return (2003) (The Return). Lavronenko became the first Russian actor ever to win this honour.
- Lists Sergey Loznitsa, Aleksey Mizgiryov, Aleksey Fedorchenko, and Vasiliy Sigarev as some of his favorite contemporary Russian filmmakers.
- Served in the Russian Army in 1984 through 1986.
- Studied acting at The Russian University of Theatre Arts (GITIS) from 1986 to 1990.
- As a trained actor, he found difficulty in getting acting jobs. Between the years 1990 and 2000 he said he had only acted in two stage plays and a plethora of episodic bit parts in various TV shows. Zvyagintsev stated that whatever acting aspirations that came to fruition during this time turned out to be very uninteresting and entirely "empty" in terms of personal fulfillment. Around the years 1993-1994 is when he first turned to directing TV commercials which he shot on 35mm. It was during this time where he heard the sound of film running through the camera for the first time before even knowing such filmmaking terms as; "Roll Camera! Action!". At 36 years old, which was a critical moment in his life he had a realization that for almost 10 years he was going nowhere in life. It was at this point when he had decided to make a film.
- Member of the 'Official Competition' jury at the 71st Cannes International Film Festival in 2018.
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