Two Prosecutors
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.
Sergey Loznitsa (1964) earned a degree in engineering and mathematics at the Kiev Polytechnic Institute and later studied at the Russian State Institute of Cinematography in Moscow (VGIK). He directed several short and feature-length documentaries before making his first fiction feature “My Joy”, which won the Grand Prix at PÖFF in 2010. His second feature “In the Fog” (2012) won the FIPRESCI Prize at Cannes and was also screened at PÖFF. In 2014, Loznitsa was PÖFF’s special guest with his documentary “Maidan” (2014).
Filmography:
(valik/selected): Schastye moe (Minu õnn, PÖFF 2010), V tumane (Udus, PÖFF 2012), Maidan (PÖFF 2014, doc), Sobytie (Sündmus, PÖFF 2015, doc), Austerlitz (PÖFF 2016, doc), Krotkaya (Vagurake, PÖFF 2017), The Trial (Protsess, PÖFF 2018, doc), Donbass (PÖFF 2018), Mr. Landsbergis (PÖFF 2021, doc), The Kiev Trial (2022, doc), Sissetung (The Invasion, 2024, doc), Zwei Staatsanwälte (Two Prosecutors, 2025)