CANNES – Citizens arrested without justifiable cause. Enemies of the state are imprisoned with no chance of due process. An unhinged secret police force working for an authoritarian ruler, attempting to quell any political dissent. These are moments in history that have occurred time and time again. No matter how liberal society believes it has evolved, they consistently return to wreak havoc. These human failings are at the center of Sergey Loznitsa’s historical drama “Two Prosecutors” and, sadly, are more relevant than ever following its premiere at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival.
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Based on Georgy Demidov’s posthumous novel of the same name, the movie begins at a state prison in Bakzur, Russia, as a long static shot allows the viewer to witness a chain gang of malnourished and beaten prisoners arrive to assist in construction. Loznitsa keeps such a distance to ensure everyone is faceless and there is little melodrama to the proceedings. This is a mundane scene. It is an everyday occurrence, even if it shouldn’t be.
One of the inmates is plucked by a guard to assist in destroying written requests from prisoners meant for the state prosecutor (essentially legal pleas for help). He reads them one by one, throwing their horror stories into a furnace until one finds his attention. A request written in human blood.
Sometime later, investigative prosecutor Kornyev (Alexander Kuznetsov) arrives. Consistently ridiculed by the guards for his relatively young age for the position, he spends hours attempting to speak with Stepinak, a request that visibly frustrates the prison authorities. After almost an entire day of waiting, he meets the prison governor, who levies vile threats against him in an attempt to delay an interview. Kornev is steadfast, however, and quietly won’t take no for an answer. Be warned, it’s over 40 minutes until Kornev comes face to face with Stepinak, and then another 20 minutes till he leaves the prison. Lozitsna intentionally plays out this scenario to its narrative limit and, despite his artistic ambitions, barely gets away with it.
Kornev’s meeting with Stepinak (a performance of a lifetime from 80-year-old Aleksandr Filippenko) is terrifying on multiple levels. Stepinak, a former prosecutor himself, is a Communist Party committee member who tried to stand up to the NKVD, also known as the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs, better known as the secret police. This is the height of the Stalin purges, and Stepinak’s stubbornness in trying to rout out corruption has found him on death’s door, living in the squalor of a prison cell designed to destroy your spirit.
Impowered after he meets with the political prisoner, Kornyev takes an unapproved trip to Moscow to attempt a meeting with the Prosecutor General, Andrey Vyshinsky (Anatoliy Belyy), the only real historical figure in the film. Kornyev believes Vyshinsky is an admirable man who will not only protect him but also provide a proper investigation into Stepinak’s treatment and imprisonment. When he arrives in Moscow, it becomes increasingly clear Kornyev can trust no one. A striking realization conveyed in a scene where Kornyev assists a secretary in picking up papers that have fallen down a staircase. As he looks up from passing her the papers, he realizes he is the only one willing to help, and everyone else in the busy hall is staring at him for doing so.
Inspired by the Russian novelist Nikolai Gogol and Franz Kafka, Loznitsa and his creative team have been meticulous in how every shot plays out. And as hinted earlier, the entire motion picture is meticulous to a fault. It’s only a somewhat twisty ending that saves the endeavor from blowing its relevance away.
It’s unlikely Loznitsa could have imagined the scenarios that play out in “Two Prosecutors” would be as contemporary a year ago as they are today. At least when looking across the Atlantic at the supposed flag bearer of democracy and constitutional rights, the United States. Of course, political oppression was a constant during the Soviet era (to different degrees), and parts of military dictatorships in South America, Southeast Asia, and, currently, in the Middle East and Africa. And of course, it’s a key element of the Russian regime today, a nation where the number of figures who fall off balconies to their death would be comical if the fact that it is somehow seen as commonplace isn’t so horrifying. But as in “Two Prosecutors,” everyone who can do anything keeps looking away. [B]
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