Andrey Zvyagintsev gave an interview for the first time after a coma: “I don’t get up”

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Yesterday, a new interview was released on the YouTube channel of film critic Anton Dolin. His hero was 58-year-old Andrey Zvyagintsev, who struggled with a severe form of COVID-19 and its consequences for a year. This is the director’s first interview after his illness, in which he spoke in detail about his state of health and complications.

Zvyagintsev admitted that he caught the virus due to a weakened immune system immediately after the first dose of the vaccine.

The first doctor I called when I had a fever was a pulmonologist. Thank God I had a number in my notebook. He told me that I needed to be hospitalized immediately. I managed to hear his voice just in time.

Soon he developed sepsis with 90% lung damage, which threatened a transplant, which subsequently required to be carried out every 5 years. The chance to avoid transplantation nevertheless appeared when Andrei Petrovich went to a German clinic, where in mid-August 2021 he was put into an artificial coma for a month and a half.

On the first of July I was in the clinic, on the eighth I was in intensive care. I remember the doctor’s face, like it was all in a dream, that’s why I remember him, who pulled me out of this state with a saving gesture. Now we are very close friends. Around the end of September, after 40 days or more, they began to bring me out of a coma. This is also a long process when you are taken out of a coma.

After coming out of a coma in September, Zvyagintsev’s condition stabilized and his lungs began to recover. However, the rehabilitation process was accompanied by clouding of consciousness and damage to the peripheral nervous system – the director did not feel his arms and legs.

Everything fell out of hand. Nurses fed me with a spoon, – Zvyagintsev described his condition. – My space and time is now limited to one and a half to two meters – a bed in a clinic. I am chained, one might say, to her and from her I do not get up.

Thanks to physiotherapy, now Zvyagintsev’s hands have almost recovered. His legs remain inactive, and he cannot walk on his own, so he moves on a walker or in a wheelchair. In addition, the ligaments also suffered: the director actually learned to speak again.

My life has changed dramatically and to say that it’s just a disease or an unfortunate coincidence of some circumstances is not enough to say, because in the literal sense they took me out of the other world, – the director admitted.

In February, his colleague, the star of the series “Kept Women” Vladimir Mishukov, spoke about the director’s condition. Recall that Zvyagintsev’s last film to date, the 2018 drama “Loveless”, was nominated for an Oscar in the category “Best Foreign Language Film”. However, like the earlier sensational work of the director – “Leviathan” (2014).