From director Sergei Loznitsa, an odyssey through the Soviet prison bureaucracy.
Story/Mood: In late 1930s Soviet Union, an idealistic young prosecutor meets a prison inmate who has been tortured by the secret police. At the prisoner’s request, he travels to Moscow to report the abuse to the highest authorities. This is the seemingly straightforward setup for The Two Prosecutors based on a novella by gulag-survivor, Georgy Demidov. But nothing is straightforward here. It is what is not said and not shown that makes the film chilling from the first shot—the prison gate opening—to the last—the same gate firmly closing shut.
The Look: Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa painstakingly depicts the time and effort it takes to get from point A to B in the prison complex. The endless corridors to be traversed, the many doors to be unlocked and locked. All physical violence takes place either off-screen or at such a distance (seen from a high window above the prison courtyard, for instance) that it’s hard to make out what exactly happened—which only ratchets up the tension. Several interior shots include three walls and part of the ceiling, building a sense of claustrophobia. We follow the prosecutor as he’s escorted through corridors that become narrower and narrower. And unlike The West Wing where walking serves as action over which to layer snappy, fast-paced dialogue, here no one speaks. Towards the end, when two jovial travelers befriend the prosecutor on the train back home from Moscow, their chattiness itself becomes unnerving. I was also struck by how some of the characters, including the tortured prisoner, place so much faith in Stalin. They believe that the wrongs done to them can be righted if only they could speak to the great man directly—instead of realizing that he is the source of the problem.
Crew: Loznitsa has made several documentaries including Babi Yar. Context (2021), about the murder of 33,771 Jews by the Nazis in Kyiv, Ukraine; and The Invasion (2024), about the everyday life of Ukrainians during Russia’s invasion of their country. In an interview about his latest film, Loznitsa said: “It seems that we are returning to the time before the Second World War, and it’s very sad. It’s very regretful. It seems that no lessons have been learned from the events that took place 80, 90 years ago. This is why I’m going back to this subject and showing just a tiny part of this totalitarian regime that seems to be coming back — the shadow of which is looming on the horizon.”
Where to Watch: Two Prosecutors is currently in theaters. And I definitely recommend watching it on the big screen. If you can’t, look for it when it comes out on streaming platforms.
Other notes: 118 minutes. In Russian with English subtitles. More about Demidov here.
