Soviet Union, 1937. Thousands of letters from detainees falsely accused by the regime are burned in a prison cell. Against all odds, one of them reaches its destination, upon the desk of the newly appointed local prosecutor, Alexander Kornev. Kornev does his utmost to meet the prisoner, a victim of corrupt agents of the secret police, the NKVD. A dedicated Bolshevik of integrity, the young prosecutor suspects foul play. His quest for justice will take him all the way to the office of the Attorney General in Moscow. In the age of the great Stalinist purges, this is the plunge of a man into the corridors of a totalitarian regime that does not bear said name.

Cast & Crew
Producer: Kevin Chneiweiss
Director: Sergei Loznitsa
Script: Sergei Loznitsa
Director of Photography: Oleg Mutu
Artistic Director: Kirill Shuvalov
Production Design: Yuriy Grigorovich, Aldis Meinerts
Music: Christiaan Verbeek
Sound: Vladimir Golovnitskiy, Vincent Sinceretti
Editing: Danielius Kokanauskis
Cast: Aleksandr Kuznetsov, Alexander Filippenko, Anatoli Beliy
Production. SBS Productions - Saïd Ben Saïd

Sergei Loznitsa
Sergei Loznitsa was born in 1964 in the city of Baranovichi, USSR (now Belarus) and grew up in Kiev, Ukraine, graduating from the Kiev Polytechnic with a degree in Applied Mathematics in 1987. From 1987 to 1991, he worked as a scientist at the Kiev Institute of Cybernetics, specializing in artificial intelligence research. In 1997, Loznitsa graduated from the Russian State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) in Moscow. Sergei Loznitsa has been making films since 1996, and by now has directed 28 award-winning documentaries and 5 fiction films. Loznitsa’s feature debut My Joy (2010) premiered in the main competition in Cannes. His films - both fiction and documentary - have been recognized with major awards including the FIPRESCI Prize at the Festival de Cannes for In the Fog in 2012, the Best Director Prize of Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section for his feature film Donbass in 2018, a Special Jury Prize of the L’Oeil D’Or Award in Cannes for Babi Yar. Context in 2021, as well as the IDFA Award for Best Film for Mr. Landsbergis that same year; among many other international awards. In 2013, Sergei Loznitsa founded the film production company Atoms & Void. Based in Europe since 2001, Loznitsa continues to work on both documentary and fiction projects.
 
Filmography
Today We Are Going to Build a House (doc., 1996), The Train Stop (doc., 2000), Portrait (doc., 2002), The Settlement (doc., 2002), Landscape (doc., 2003), Factory (doc., 2004), Blockade (doc., 2006), Artel (doc., 2006), Revue (doc., 2008), Sweet Sixties (doc., 2008), Northern Light (doc. 2008), My Joy (2010), Life, Autumn (doc., 2011), In the Fog (2012), The Miracle of Saint Anthony (doc., 2012), Letter (doc., 2013), Maidan (doc., 2014), Bridges of Sarajevo (segment “Reflections”, 2014), The Old Jewish Cemetery (doc., 2015), The Event (doc., 2015), Austerlitz (doc., 2016), A Gentle Creature (2017), Victory Day (doc., 2018), Donbass (2018), The Trial (doc., 2018), State Funeral (doc., 2019), Celles qui chantant (doc., 2020), A Night at the Opera (doc., 2020), Babi Yar. Context (doc., 2021), Mr. Landsbergis (doc., 2021), The Natural History of Destruction (doc., 2022), The Kiev Trial (doc., 2022), The Invasion (doc., 2024), Paleontology Lesson (doc., 2025), Two Prosecutors (2025).