Sergei Loznitsa, born in Belarus, grew up in Ukraine, studied film in Moscow and has lived in Berlin for more than 20 years. He has first-hand experience of the end of the old Soviet Union and the independence of Ukraine. His films often revolve around historical themes, regularly moving between fictional and documentary subjects.
In his new feature film, ‘Two Prosecutors’, which received excellent reviews in Cannes, Loznitsa goes back to the time of the Stalinist show trials. The film was based on a story by the physicist and author Georgi Demidov, who was accused in 1938 and sentenced to 18 years in a prison camp. It is 1937 and the young public prosecutor Kornev (Alexander Kuznetsov) receives an anonymous letter containing a piece of cardboard covered in blood. In the letter, a prisoner asks for his case to be investigated. The public prosecutor decides to visit the prison unannounced by virtue of his office. Until Kornev appears in the film, Loznitsa establishes the prison cosmos with its brutal prison conditions in long takes. The casting exaggerates somewhat with the selection of the guards, who look as sinister and brutish as possible in terms of their physiognomy.
The prison director demonstratively makes him wait before he is admitted to the next higher instance. Thanks to his persistence, Kornev manages to speak to the prisoner Stepniak (Alexander Filipenko). Stepniak used to be a senior party functionary who was accused of being a counter-revolutionary and tortured by the NKVD secret service. He believes that there is a conspiracy against Soviet power in the local secret service and advises Kornev to travel to Moscow to inform the highest authorities about these fascist machinations.
Kornev actually manages to see General Prosecutor Vyshinsky (Anatoly Beli). After listening to him impassively, Vyshinski sends him back to the provinces with a request for further evidence. By the time the young prosecutor meets two jovial travellers in his compartment who share his destination, we know that the story will not end well for Kornev. In fact, we suspect it very early on, because unlike the idealistic prosecutor, we know that the trials were not about ‘Soviet justice’, but rather that the defendants made absurd confessions in the deceptive hope of protecting their families or saving themselves from the death penalty. Loznitsa divides the film into four long dialogues with the prison director, the prisoner, the general prosecutor and the passengers in the train compartment. This makes the pace of the narrative somewhat slow. We always know more than the prosecutor and wonder how he can still be so naive.
In 2018, Loznitsa had already dealt with the topic of show trials in the documentary film ‘The Trial’. In 1930, at the beginning of the Stalinist purges, high-ranking economists and engineers were accused of planning a coup d'état with the help of the French government. All the charges are fabricated, the defendants accuse themselves, the whole affair is a macabre spectacle, a show trial following a pre-written script.
In the French film ‘Dossier 137’ by Dominik Moll, the protagonist is not a public prosecutor, but a police inspector who works for the ‘Inspection générale de la Police nationale’ (IPGN) department, the ‘police of the police’ so to speak, to check whether officers are behaving lawfully in their work. Léa Drucker plays Inspector Stéphanie, who is involved in investigating a case concerning the behaviour of the police during the ‘gilets jaunes’ (yellow vests) demonstrations at the end of 2018.
A young protester is so badly injured by a rubber bullet that he suffers a skull fracture and permanent brain damage. Stéphanie and her colleagues meticulously investigate the crime scene and the identity of the police unit responsible. They eventually come across plainclothes police officers from the BRI special unit who shot the unarmed demonstrator unprovoked and at close range. Until an incriminating video emerges, the suspected police officers deny any involvement in the crime. Stéphanie is insulted by representatives of the police union, who tell her that she should concentrate on fighting crime rather than dragging her colleagues into the mud.
Dominik Moll uses an individual case to illustrate the often brutal behaviour of the police during the 'yellow vests' demonstrations. Both the police and the demonstrators are portrayed in a differentiated and individualised way. Léa Drucker impresses quite effortlessly in the role of the inspector and is probably a favourite for the best actress award. She has long been a star in France and made a strong impression in Catherine Breillat's film ‘L'Été dernier’ (Last Summer) in Cannes two years ago. I suspect that one reason for the strength and international success of French film lies also in a functioning star system. Unlike in Germany, there is an abundance of actors and actresses in cinematically convincing films which draw audiences to the cinema.