Cannes Film Festival 2025: « Two Prosecutors, » the film by Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa, in competition

Briansk, Soviet Union, 1937, Russia during the Stalinist purges.

In a dark cell with bare walls, an old, white-bearded inmate, brought in by two prison guards, sits in front of a stove, next to a pile of letters.

The man has orders to burn these thousands of letters written by inmates wrongly accused by the regime during the great Stalinist purges.

Slowly, resigned, he throws them into the fire, one by one. One of them, however, a piece of cardboard written in blood, which, like all the others, was hastily written by upright Bolsheviks proclaiming their innocence and imploring help from Comrade Stalin, Molotov, Vyshinsky, and others, escaped destruction and reached Alexander Kornev, the local prosecutor.

The young, idealistic lawyer, newly appointed to his post, understood that all had been victims of corrupt agents of the NKVD (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs), the secret police.
He fought to contact the letter’s author and, persevering and tenacious, despite intimidation from the management, he managed to speak to him in the prison cell where he was being held.
It was then that he discovered the violence, torture, deprivation, and abuse of all kinds suffered by the prisoners. With the firm intention of denouncing them and revealing the reality of a perverse system of widespread purges that was being imposed, he traveled by train to Moscow to address Prosecutor General Andrei Vyshinsky… a relentless and futile quest for justice that would lead to his own downfall.

The film plunges us into a true Kafkaesque nightmare.
Captivated, we follow with horror the slow progression of the lawyer within the prison.

Guided by a mocking and vulgar commandant through a labyrinth of damp corridors, to the incessant rattling of keys, he passes through heavy, creaking iron doors under the oppressive gaze of a multitude of guards, progressing from gate to gate, up staircase to staircase, finally arriving at Cell 54, Special Building, the detention center of Stepniak, a « dangerous opponent of the regime. »

Sergei Loznitsa’s oppressive and chilling direction reflects the totalitarian regime he depicts.

At every moment, the anguish emanates from these long, fixed shots in 4:3 format, in the gloom of gloomy corridors and barren cells, from these heavy silences punctuated by frightening metallic noises, from all these cold, empty stares fixed on the intruder.

A tribute to the victims of totalitarianism by a director opposed to Putin’s Russia, skillfully pitting two prosecutors against each other, the film illustrates the excesses of the past to warn of the current threats weighing on democracies with regard to the values ​​of justice.

« Two Prosecutors, » by Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa, is adapted from the novel by Georgy Demidov, a Russian intellectual imprisoned in the gulag in 1938.

Starring Alexander Kuznetsov, Anatoly Beliy, and Alexander Filippenko. A France/Germany/Netherlands/Latvia/Romania/Lithuania co-production.
In theaters September 24.

©2025 – IMPACT EUROPEAN

RED CARPET

After the photocall

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