Two Prosecutors

Drama, Sergei Loznitsa, 117’, Ukrainian and Russian, 2025 In the local prison of a Russian provincial town, the young public prosecutor Kornyev visits a prisoner who has complained about his treatment. It is 1937, the height of Stalins Grote Terreur, when the secret service NKVD massively picked up, falsely accused and killed (alleged) political opponents. Endless seems Kornyev's slow walk past unwilling officials and stiff guards, through encrypted iron doors, barred gates and corridors with thick indifferent walls. The renowned Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa makes it a magnificently designed Kafkaesque moral tale. Based on a story by Georgy Demidov, a Russian physicist and writer who himself spent eighteen years in a penal camp due to false accusations. (VPRO-Cinema)