September 13, 2026
Presented by MACON FILM GUILD
Drama/History 118 Minutes
Directed by Sergey Loznitsa
The latest film from the famed Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa (My Joy) adapts a novel by Soviet writer and political prisoner Georgy Demidov, set in the Soviet Union in 1937. It follows the attempts of a government-appointed prosecutor (Alexander Kuznetsov) to expose the mistreatment of a dissident Bolshevik writer who has been jailed and tortured without evidence of wrongdoing. As he gradually comes to realize, the lack of cause for the man’s imprisonment is hardly unique under Stalin’s regime, and the lawyer may be putting himself in danger by exposing his own righteousness.
“The film is extraordinary: the measured pace exerts an ever-tightening chokehold of tension, and the period details are brilliantly evoked.” —The Observer (UK)