The movie
Two Prosecutors
The acclaimed Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa paints a grim portrait of Stalinist Russia in the 1930s. A young, still uncorrupted public prosecutor investigates the case of a mistreated and unjustly imprisoned “Old Bolshevik.” Can the case be successfully brought before the chief prosecutor?
Description
Soviet Union, 1937. In a prison cell, thousands of letters from wrongly accused prisoners—pleading for legal assistance—are burned. Against all odds, one of these letters reaches its destination: the office of Alexander Kornyev, a young, newly appointed local prosecutor. Kornyev does everything in his power to meet the prisoner, the heavily guarded party veteran Stepnyak. As a devoted Bolshevik with a strong sense of integrity, he suspects that something is amiss.
Kornyev decides to travel to Moscow to present the case to the chief prosecutor. But in his pursuit of justice, he soon encounters the brutal logic of a totalitarian regime.
Two Prosecutors is a gripping political drama that takes us into the era of the Great Stalinist purges in Russia. Acclaimed director Sergei Loznitsa based the film on a novella by Georgy Demidov, a political prisoner who spent fourteen years in a gulag. The result is a suffocating portrait of tyrannical social control with powerful contemporary relevance.
At a time when the independence of the judiciary and the value of truth are once again under pressure, Kornyev’s search for justice feels like a timely warning. Two Prosecutors premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, where it competed in the main competition, and was subsequently met with critical acclaim from the international press.
