Sergey Loznitsa’s strongest work of fiction yet is an absurdist drama set during the height of Stalin’s Great Terror.

Soviet Union, 1937. Thousands of letters from detainees falsely accused by the regime are burned in a prison cell. Against all odds, one of them reaches its destination, upon the desk of the newly appointed local prosecutor, Alexander Kornev.

Kornev does his utmost to meet the prisoner, a victim of corrupt agents of the secret police, the NKVD. A dedicated Bolshevik of integrity, the young prosecutor suspects foul play. His quest for justice will take him all the way to the office of the Attorney General in Moscow.

In the age of the great Stalinist purges, this is the plunge of a man into the corridors of a totalitarian regime that does not bear said name.

Sergey Loznitsa’s (“Invasion”, PÖFF 2024) latest feature film premiered in the main competition programme at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.