“Imperium”, interview with director Sergei Loznitsa

During the Venice Film Festival 2026 we spoke with director Sergei Loznitsa for his new film Imperium, presented here at the festival in the Venice Open – Out of Competition section. , director of the film Imperium, was interviewed at the eighty-third Venice Film Festival. This remarkable documentary, as the title may suggest, explores the cultural, social, and historical diversity of the former Soviet Union through a unique collage of footage and archive material. The “empire” in this context refers to the vast, imperial dimension of the USSR that the film aims to depict and analyze.

The interview

During our interview with FRED Film Radio, Sergei Loznitsa delved into the creative choices behind this huge project and on its reflection on history and identity, reconstructing the narration of the film Imperium from Soviet-era footage. Loznitsa explained that most of the existing images from that time were from Soviet propaganda, but the Italian filmmakers’ approach (the people that these images come from), had a respect for human personality and a clear disapproval of propagandistic symbols, revealing the true, diverse face of the territories, rather than the imposed image from the regime.

Loznitsa reflected also on how the footage, especially from the ’70s Soviet Union, hints at an empire with colonial characteristics, highlighting the awareness of the surroundings, capturing the empire’s subtleties without propagandist bias. Another interesting aspect to highlight was the lack of voice-over and its nearly three-hour length. The director stated that this choice demands an active interpretative effort from viewers, serving as a resistance to simplification of complex geopolitical realities. The fragmented footage, indeed, combined with sound, functions as a visual puzzle requiring audience engagement to understand the historical and social context of what Imperium really means.

Plot