“Two Prosecutors”, interview with director Sergei Loznitsa

May 16, 2025

Sergei Loznitsa on how his film about Stalin’s repression in the Soviet Union resonates with today’s current situation

“Two Prosecutors”, interview with director Sergei Loznitsa Chiara Nicoletti

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Sergei Loznitsa is back in Cannes competition at the 78th edition of the festival with “Two prosecutors“.

The film marks the director’s return to fiction, almost ten years after Donbass, presented in Un Certain Regard in Cannes.

The Ucranian director was at the Festival de Cannes last year with “The invasion“, a documentary showing the everyday life, along two years, of civilians during the war.

With “Two prosecutors” Loznitsa brings to big screen Georgy Demidov’s novella, about the authors’ experience in a gulag for 14 years.

As it was written in 1969, the book was confiscated by the KGB in the 80’s and then only released in 2009. Loznitsa read it and started working on its adaptation to the big screen in 2020.

The reason why the director decided it was the right time to bring this book to the screen is that the situation in Russia and other countries is getting worse and worse everyday.

As he said to Variety: “Watching this story from the past, we also recognize the present”.

Plot

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.

Written by: Chiara Nicoletti

The invasion

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Sergei Loznitsa

Film

Two Prosecutors

Festival

Festival de Cannes

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