Two Prosecutors
Soviet Union, 1937: the newly graduated, idealistic Alexander Kornyev has taken up a post as a public prosecutor. It is the time of the Great Purge; all (alleged) opponents of the Stalinist regime are being arrested, imprisoned and often executed. Many of these prisoners send letters pleading their innocence, but as a rule these letters are intercepted and destroyed. By chance, one such letter reaches Korneev, sent by Stepniak, once a loyal member of the Communist Party. This Stepniak claims that there is corruption within the NKVD, the Soviet Union’s secret service. Korniev decides to visit the prisoner; he wants to reopen the case. That decision will cost him dearly.
Ukrainian director Sergey Loznitsa, who has already devoted many feature films and documentaries to Russia’s complex history, shows in this drama—as sober as it is gripping—how an individual can be ground down in the ideological cogs of a totalitarian regime. Starring Alexander Kuznetsov.
