‘DAU’: First Teaser From Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s Epic Venice Competition Title
News Source
•Wed, 09 Sep 2026 19:50:38 +0000
📰 What Happened
The first teaser for DAU has arrived. The epic film about physicist Lev Landau premiered in competition at the Venice Film Festival. It runs a staggering 165 minutes and took its director two decades to make.
DAU follows Landau, a brilliant Greek-born physicist drawn into state service to help build one of history's deadliest weapons, the Soviet atomic bomb. Inside a secret research institute, his life is ruled by scientific ambition, surveillance and power. As his freedom shrinks, he drifts through affairs and slowly loses himself.
🔍 The Backstory
Lev Landau was a real Soviet physicist who won a Nobel Prize. Director Ilya Khrzhanovsky is known for extreme methods and is often called a dissident. His DAU project became famous in film circles for building an immersive world where actors lived in character for years.
The film was first announced long ago, and fans have waited years to see it. Venice is one of the world's top festivals, so a competition slot signals serious artistic ambition. The movie asks how a brilliant mind could serve a brutal system, and what those choices cost him.
🎯 Why It Matters
DAU tells the story of a genius who helped build a weapon of mass destruction, a question of conscience that still matters today. A film two decades in the making is a landmark event for cinema lovers.
The first teaser for DAU has arrived. The epic film about physicist Lev Landau premiered in competition at the Venice Film Festival. It runs a staggering 165 minutes and took its director two decades to make.
DAU follows Landau, a brilliant Greek-born physicist drawn into state service to help build one of history's deadliest weapons, the Soviet atomic bomb. Inside a secret research institute, his life is ruled by scientific ambition, surveillance and power. As his freedom shrinks, he drifts through affairs and slowly loses himself.
Lev Landau was a real Soviet physicist who won a Nobel Prize. Director Ilya Khrzhanovsky is known for extreme methods and is often called a dissident. His DAU project became famous in film circles for building an immersive world where actors lived in character for years.
The film was first announced long ago, and fans have waited years to see it. Venice is one of the world's top festivals, so a competition slot signals serious artistic ambition. The movie asks how a brilliant mind could serve a brutal system, and what those choices cost him.
DAU tells the story of a genius who helped build a weapon of mass destruction, a question of conscience that still matters today. A film two decades in the making is a landmark event for cinema lovers.