Production notes

The Return was filmed on and around Lake Ladoga and the Gulf of Finland. The budget of the film remains a secret, though in an interview the director and the producer hinted that it was well below $500,000. The director also mentioned that the producers made their money back even before it was screened at the Venice Film Festival. The film premiered in Russia on 16 October 2003, with the worldwide premiere taking place on 31 October 2003. Vladimir Garin drowned shortly after filming and two months before the film's debut. He was 16 years old.

The Return grossed $4,429,093 worldwide.

As of 20 September 2020, The Return has an approval rating of 95% on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 88 reviews, and an average rating of 8.2/10. The website's critical consensus states, "A suspenseful but perplexing thriller". Metacritic has assigned the film a weighted average score of 82 out of 100 based on 30 critic reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". Roger Ebert reviewed, "It is a Kafkaesque story, in which ominous things follow one another with a certain internal logic but make no sense at all." In a 2016 BBC critics' poll, The Return was ranked the 80th-greatest film of the 21st century. In 2023 The Hollywood Reporter critics' poll, The Return was ranked the 32nd-greatest of the 21st century.

BBC Four World Cinema Awards 2005 Winner, BBC Four World Cinema Award European Film Awards Winner, European Discovery of the Year (Fassbinder Award) Golden Globe Awards Nominee, Best Foreign Language Film Russia Palm Springs International Film Festival Winner, Best Foreign Film Venice Film Festival Winner, Golden Lion Winner, 'CinemAvvenire' Award for Best First Film Winner, SIGNIS Award Winner, Sergio Trasatti Award Winner, Luigi De Laurentiis Award for Best Debut Film Guldbagge Awards Winner, Best Foreign Film César Awards Nominee, Best Foreign Film

Russian Guild of Film Critics Winner, Best Film Winner, Best Director of Photography (Mikhail Krichman) Winner, Best Debut Nika Award Winner, Best Film Winner, Best Director of Photography (Mikhail Krichman) Golden Eagle Award Winner, Best Film Winner, Best Director of Photography (Mikhail Krichman) Winner, Best Sound (Andrei Khudyakov)