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Two Prosecutors film image; serious man sitting at a posh desk

Two Prosecutors

Showcase

© SBS Productions

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1937: At the peak of Stalin’s purges, gulags were being filled with political prisoners — their letters burned, their due process denied. When a letter from a prisoner (Aleksandr Filippenko) claiming innocence miraculously slips through the censors and reaches the desk of the naïve, freshly graduated prosecutor Alexander Kornev (Alexander Kuznetsov), the legal representative sets out to investigate, unaware of the labyrinthine bureaucracy awaiting him. Kornev finds his idealism challenged in his journey for answers as he discovers not only his own powerlessness as a cog in the Soviet machine, but the sheer corruption of the state itself.

Best known for his documentaries, Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa here adapts Georgy Demidov’s semi-autobiographical novella as a procedural thriller, crafting a work of cynical suspense. Two Prosecutors channels the spirits of both Gogol and Kafka, cutting the tragedy of its premise with undercurrents of dark irony and austere absurdism. A bleak and urgent film about the nature of truth and pursuit of justice in the face of corruption and totalitarianism.

Director

Sergei Loznitsa

Cast

Aleksandr Kuznetsov, Alexander Filippenko, Anatoli Beliy

Credits
Country of Origin

France/Germany/Netherlands/
Latvia/Romania/Lithuania

Year

2025

Language

In Russian with English subtitles

18+
119 min
Drama Human Rights & Social Justice
SBS Productions, LOOKSfilm, Atoms and Void, White Picture, Avanpost Media, Uljana Kim Studio

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Credits

Producer

Kevin Chneiweiss

Screenwriter

Sergei Loznitsa

Cinematography

Oleg Mutu

Editor

Danielius Kokanauskis

Production Design

Jurij Grigorovic, Aldis Meinerts

Original Music

Christiaan Verbeek

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