Sergey Loznica / France, Netherlands, Germany, Romania, Latvia, Lithuania / 2025 / 118 min / Russian

The film by Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa (The Tame Girl, Donbas) is a Kafkaesque journey into the heart of a totalitarian regime, imbued with a tormented atmosphere of inevitability and sprinkled with the author's characteristic grotesque humour.

Story

The Soviet Union in 1937, the culmination of Stalin's terror. Thousands of letters from falsely accused prisoners burn in the prison furnace, but one of them only finds its way to the newly appointed local prosecutor, Alexander Kornev. A young lawyer, a dedicated and honest Bolshevik, after much insistence, finally manages to meet with a prisoner. Convinced that he is a victim of a corrupt local secret police, he sets out to report his discovery to the Prosecutor General in Moscow himself...