Two Prosecutors

Synopsis

In the midst of Stalanist Russia’s Great Terror, hundreds of party critics are unjustly imprisoned in deplorable conditions. The detainees write letters, thousands of them, in hopes that their pleas for freedom will fall into the hands of someone who can help. The secret police burn them before they are sent. Against all odds, though, one such letter reaches the desk of Alexander Kornev, an idealistic prosecutor. When attempting to offer counsel to the prisoner who authored the missive, though, he’s met with suspicion and resistance from local officials. Suspecting foul play, he embarks on a quest to Moscow, intent on justice.

An exacting, austere visual style—a mostly immobile camera captures the action in long, unbroken takes—creates a mounting sense of chilling, Kafkaesque paranoia. Festival award-winner Sergei Loznitsa (Natural History of Destruction, 2022) returns with this unflinching, absurdist confrontation with the Soviet state’s grim, totalitarian reality.