Fresh from Cannes acclaim comes a gripping, mordantly absurd and meticulous study of the inverted logic of state terror from master chronicler of tyranny Sergei Loznitsa.
Impeccably directed and impressively acted, this slow-burn story of political injustice is filled to the brim with atmosphere.
Two Prosecutors 2025
Dva prokurora
It’s 1937 in the Soviet Union, at the height of Stalin’s Great Purge. Commitment to the truth is a deadly professional risk for anyone working in the justice system, where made-up accusations are leveraged to oust the idealistic and replace them with the loyal incompetents needed to shore up brute power. Letters written in jail are routinely censored and burnt inside its walls. But a missive by a political prisoner requesting an ear over systematic maltreatment and attempts to extract false confessions miraculously reaches the desk of the new prosecutor, Kornev, who travels to meet with its desperate author.
Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa has long been adept at portraying the grim dances of state repression and civic resistance. This icily precise, impressively acted dissection of “communist justice,” which comes first for its most stubborn believers and leaves just the rotten from top to bottom, has a touch of the grotesque wit of Kafka, and won rave reviews at Cannes. Based on a novella by Georgy Demidov, himself imprisoned for fourteen years, this newly relevant story is impeccably lensed as a queasy tunnel of slow-burn, claustrophobic inevitability. — Carmen Gray