1937 Stalinist USSR: A newly appointed prosecutor discovers an undestroyed letter from a prisoner that reveals corruption in the secret police, the NKVD. His search for the truth becomes very dangerous.
A desperate letter from an unjustly imprisoned man reaches a newly appointed local prosecutor (Aleksandr Kuznetsov). He vows to correct this injustice, jumping dutifully through every bureaucratic hoop until he can meet with the government bigwig who can help. Adapted from a 1969 novel by gulag survivor Georgy Demidov, this is a shout of futility that is also strangely, bitterly funny. If you didn’t laugh, you’d cry. Impeccably photographed, staged and acted, the film has a chilling resonance with modern times. (Subtitles)
France/Germany/Ukraine 2025 Sergey Loznitsa 118m
