Latest news with #TwoProsecutors
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Two Prosecutors' Review: Sergei Loznitsa's Chilling Soviet Drama Is A Bleak Warning From History
Sergei Loznitsa's forensically objective, intellectually nuanced documentaries tend to stand in stark contrast to his fictional output; in films like My Joy, In the Fog and Donbass, the Ukrainian director is inclined to put his cards on the table, usually addressing his signature subject: the abject failure of the Russian state. Two Prosecutors follows in that tradition, being a very slow and very talky chamber piece that could be the most terrifying comedy that Aki Kaurismäki never made, or a Chaplin-esque horror film about the evils of bureaucracy in a world ruled by morons. This time, Loznitsa doesn't just have the Kremlin in his sights; Two Prosecutors is one of his most accessible films to date, with relevance to every country wrestling with authoritarian political parties right now. Based on a novella by Soviet and political activist Georgy Demidov (1908-1987), Two Prosecutors begins with a screen credit noting the year as 1937 ('The height of Stalin's terror'). A prison door opens, and a procession of broken men file out into the yard. 'This is your work gang,' a warden tells his colleague. 'What a fine bunch,' is the sarcastic reply. One especially old, dishevelled man is singled out for special duties; his job is to sit by a stove in an empty cell, incinerating a huge pile of folded papers. It transpires that they are letters, written to the dear leader by men being held illegally, having been forced to confess to imaginary crimes by NKVD, the USSR's secret service. He will never read them. More from Deadline Scarlett Johansson On Why The Script For Her Directorial Debut 'Eleanor The Great' Made Her Cry: 'It's About Forgiveness' – Cannes Cover Story Cannes Film Festival 2025 in Photos: Tom Cruise, Robert De Niro, 'Sound Of Falling' & 'Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning' Premieres 'The Little Sister' Review: Nadia Melliti Makes A Striking Debut In Hafsia Herzi's Seductive Coming-Out Story - Cannes Film Festival The old man is warned of dire consequences should he give any of the letters a reprieve. Nevertheless, he tucks one away, a missive written in blood and addressed to the Bryansk Prosecutor's Office. Somehow, it gets to its intended destination, and sometime after that, the first of the two prosecutors — a recent graduate called Kornyev (Aleksandr Kuznetsov) — arrives at the prison asking to see the governor. Instead, he gets his deputy, who tries to fob him off with the Russian equivalent of 'he's in a meeting.' But Kornyev insists, demanding access to a prisoner named Stepniak. RELATED: The deputy goes to see the governor, who is lounging in his office on a leather sofa. 'Some student has turned up,' he says, and the two make plans to leave him hanging around in the deputy's office, hoping he'll just get bored and go. But Kornyev does not go, so the governor tells him that Stepniak has a contagious disease, reeling off a list of terrible diseases that are doing the rounds, like typhoid, diphtheria and much, much worse. Kornyev is undeterred, so the governor allows his request, albeit with a sinister warning. 'Washing your hands with soap won't save you from certain infections,' he says, an innocent enough line just dripping with barely concealed violence. Stepniak (Aleksandr Filippenko) is in solitary confinement, and reveals to Kornyev what's going on in the prison. Lifting up his clothing, he reveals weeping red welts and purple lesions all over his body ('That's how things are, laddy… My urine is red.'). Stepniak explains that the Soviet secret service, the NKVD, has infiltrated local government and are busily installing a kakistocracy, targeting older party members and taking them out with especially harsh punishments. Kornyev, a fine, upstanding Communist, is shocked at this contempt for the law of his land, and gets a train back to the city, where he demands an urgent meeting with the Prosecutor General. The pace is painfully methodical, as Kornyev faces obstruction and obfuscation at every level, enduring Kafka-esque levels of red tape before the Prosecutor General will even agree to see him. What separates this from, say, a Roy Andersson movie is the creeping sense of Parallax View-style menace that sets in; there's a sense that Kornyev is getting in over his head, never quite reading the room and making enemies that are each cumulatively more dangerous than the last. The set design is terrific in this regard; statues of Lenin and Stalin watch over airless, wood-paneled rooms bathed in a passive-aggressive Soviet glaze of green. In previous years, this might have seemed like more of a very local, and, culturally, very specific story, more of a cautionary tale about what might happen to us in the West if our democracies are not protected. It used to be a case of there but for the grace of God…, but in 2025, life is coming at all of us hard and fast. Two Prosecutors is a bleak warning from history, one that will only seem more and more prophetic with the passing of time — and that time starts now. Title: Two ProsecutorsFestival: Cannes (Competition)Director: Sergei LoznitsaScreenwriter: Sergei Loznitsa, based on the novella Two Prosecutors by Georgy DemidovCast: Aleksandr Kuznetsov, Aleksandr Filippenko, Anatoliy BeliySales company: SBS InternationalRunning time: 1 hr 53 mins Best of Deadline Broadway's 2024-2025 Season: All Of Deadline's Reviews Sundance Film Festival U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize Winners Through The Years Deadline Studio At Sundance Film Festival Photo Gallery: Dylan O'Brien, Ayo Edebiri, Jennifer Lopez, Lily Gladstone, Benedict Cumberbatch & More
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Sergei Loznitsa's ‘Two Prosecutors' Scores Fresh Deals For Coproduction Office
EXCLUSIVE: Sergei Loznitsa's drama Two Prosecutors, set against the backdrop of Stalin's Great Terror, has chalked up a fresh round of deals following its well-received world premiere in Competition at the Cannes Film Festival. Paris-based Coproduction Office has sealed new sales to Spain (Wanda Vision, Filmin), the Nordics and Iceland (Edge Entertainment), Poland (Aurora Films), Greece (Filmtrade) Turkey (Bir Film), Australia and New Zealand (Sharmill Films), Japan (Longride Inc.), Taiwan (Andrews Film), Hong Kong (Edko), India (Impact), Indonesia (Falcon Pictures), Brazil (Retrato Filmes), and Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay (Zeta Films). More from Deadline Janus Films Acquires Bi Gan's Cannes Prize-winner 'Resurrection' For North America Netflix Buys Richard Linklater's 'Breathless' Homage & Love Letter To Cinema 'Nouvelle Vague' In Record Domestic Deal For A French-Language Movie Breaking Baz @ Cannes: "Even If I'm Fired, I Stay," Declares Defiant Thierry Frémaux; Festival Victors Dance The Night Away After Strongest Selection In Years Previously announced deals include to Italy (Lucky Red), Portugal (Alambique), Czech Republic and Slovakia (Aerofilms), Hungary (Vertigo), Eastern Europe (HBO Europe), Estonia (Filmstop), ex-Yugoslavia, Israel (Lev) and Middle East (Falcon Films). The film was pre-acquired by Pyramide Distribution for France, which has set a September release, and Progress Film for Germany. Adapted from the eponymous novel by physicist and Gulag survivor Georgy Demidov, the film is set in the Soviet Union's era of Great Terror, or Great Purge, in the late 1930s, in which Joseph Stalin consolidated his power by either killing or incarcerating political opponents in harsh labor camps. The film focuses on a young prosecutor who sets out to challenge a system during this period after discovering a letter from a prisoner who is a desperate plea for help. Deadline critic Damon Wise noted the contemporary resonance of the story, calling the film 'a bleak warning from history' in his review, adding it held 'relevance to every country wrestling with authoritarian political parties right now.' The film is produced by Kevin Chneiweiss for France's SBS Productions, alongside Loznitsa's Netherlands-based banner Atoms & Void. Additional producers include Germany's Looks Film, Latvia's White Picture, Romania's Avanpost Media, and Lithuania's Studio Uljana Kim. SBS International is handling rights for the U.S. and U.K. Loznitsa, who is best known for his politically charged documentaries and strong fictional narratives, most recently presented his documentary The Invasion in the Special Screening Section at Cannes 2024. His past feature credits include My Joy (Cannes Competition 2010), In the Fog (Cannes Competition 2022), A Gentle Creature (Cannes Competition 2017) and Donbass (Best Director, Cannes Un Certain Regard 2018). Best of Deadline 'Hacks' Season 4 Release Schedule: When Do New Episodes Come Out? Everything We Know About 'Hacks' Season 4 So Far 'The Last Of Us': Differences Between HBO Series & Video Game Across Seasons 1 And 2
Hindustan Times
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Cannes Film Festival 2025 is all about looking at the present through the past
The loudest cheer at the 78th Cannes Film Festival was reserved for a new black and white movie about the making of a movie some 65 years ago. Nouvelle Vogue (New Wave) by American director Richard Linklater recreates the scenes of shooting legendary French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard's debut feature film, Breathless, in 1960. Cleverly mixing Godard's radical ideas of filmmaking with famous quotes on art from great minds like Jean-Paul Sartre and Paul Gaugin, Nouvelle Vogue transports today's movie-goer to the middle of the last century, coinciding with an era of counterculture. Transporting the audience to the past is a unifying theme this year among filmmakers around the world. Nearly half of the movies in the prestigious competition category at the Cannes festival are set in the last century, dating back to times following the First World War, with subtle and sometimes stark warnings of learning from history. Consider these movies vying for the prestigious Palme d'Or in Cannes: The great purge by Josef Stalin against dissent in the erstwhile Soviet Union in 1937 is the story of Belarusian-born Sergie Loznitsa's Two Prosecutors. Sound of Falling by German director Mascha Schilinski, a frontrunner for the festival's top prize, is a dark story of servitude set in the years following the First World War. Folk songs, war, and relationships mingle in The History of Sound, by South African-born Oliver Hermanus, which begins in America in 1917. American director Wes Anderson's The Phoneocian Scheme, the story of a business family in the United States, is set in the 1950s. The Secret Agent by Brazilian Kleber Mendonça Filho is set in 1977 when Brazil was under the military regime. The backdrop of Fuori by Italian Mario Martone is Rome in the 1980s when three women forge a bond while serving time in prison. An art heist in Massachusetts in 1970 during the Vietnam War is the subject of American Kelly Reichardt's The Mastermind. Suburban Tokyo in 1987 is the setting for Japanese director Chie Hayakawa's new film, Renoir, which explores the troubled childhood of an 11-year-old witnessing the slow death of her father from cancer. As stories of the last century appear on the screen many times this year, it becomes overly evident that the filmmakers are trying to address the conflicts in the contemporary world. Explains Loznitsa, the director of Two Prosecutors, about his film relating the dark history of Stalin's terror to contemporary Russia. 'Unfortunately, these topics will remain relevant as long as there are totalitarian regimes in power anywhere in the world. None of the existing societies, no matter how advanced and democratic, are immune to authoritarianism and dictatorship. This is why I believe that the great purges of the 1930s still need to be studied and reflected upon.' "Of course, we can say that history is repeating itself," adds Loznitsa, whose previous work, The Invasion, on the war in Ukraine was part of the official selection in Cannes last year. "Times change, circumstances change and technology develops, but the outcome is always tragic. The temptation to achieve one's political goals by the simple and 'effective' means of violence, can prove to be irresistible to the ruling elites of even the most democratic and seemingly incorruptible countries," he adds. "Among several films related to past events in this year's Cannes selection, two different trends can be identified," says Jean-Michel Frodon, a former editor-in-chief of iconic French film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma, where French New Wave directors Godard, Claude Chabrol and François Truffaut were once critics. "One is strictly inscribed in the past, for instance, the fake, but accurate, fictional making of Breathless by Richard Linklater. It is not pretending to relate with the present, except if seen as providing a contrast effect with now, where similar major breakthroughs in the art of cinema are hardly to be found," says Frodon. "More significant are the films set in the past that actually address the present. Sergei Loznitsa makes it very clear that what is shown during the Stalinist terror in Two Prosecutors openly echoes the Putin regime today," says Frodon, a member of the Golden Peacock competition jury at the International Film Festival of India, Goa in 2009. The Secret Agent, directed by Kleber Mendoça Filho, mostly happens during the military dictatorship in Brazil in the 1970s, but a few contemporary scenes with a young woman researching these events that happened half a century before testify that the movie is even more about today than about history. The common theme of leaning to the past repeats itself in the festival's selection outside the competition category, too. Globally acclaimed Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz goes back to the time of the colonisation of Asia by European powers in his new film, Magellan, part of the Cannes Premiere section. The film gives artistic insights into Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan's conquest and conversion, leading to mutiny and violence, and ultimately his death in the Philippines in 1521. Among other films exploring history are Turkish-origin German director Fatih Akin's Amrum set in the final months of the Second World War, Orwell: 2+2=5 by Haitian director Raoul Peck examining English novelist George Orwell's publication of his dystopian masterpiece Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1949 and the escape of Nazi doctor Josef Mengele in Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov's The Disappearance of Josef Mengele. "The fictional films set in the previous years, decades, or even centuries are more to enlighten the present than to escape from it," says Frodon. The Cannes Film Festival concludes on May 24.
Indian Express
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
Two Prosecutors & Dossier 137 — eerie portraits of lives crushed under absolute power
A succession of similar scenes, in which the protagonist is seen waiting in a hard, straight-backed chair, in dreary brown rooms ruled over by dreary brown bureaucrats, is amongst the most telling leitmotifs of Sergei Lozintsa's Cannes competition entry Two Prosecutors. You can wait all you want, but in the end, Godot will keep you waiting. The film is set in 1938, 'at the height of Stalinist terror,' and is about a newly-appointed idealistic prosecutor who receives a prisoner's letter written in blood, protesting his innocence. From then on, we see Kornev (Alexander Kuznetsov) attempting in all earnestness to try and meet the prisoner, who is at first only a number in a cell. The bloody weals on his body shock the young law graduate, and he sets out to meet the senior prosecutor, in the hope that the latter's intervention will help rectify matters. Loznitsa is in familiar territory, having given us glimpses into the labyrinthine workings of Russia and his native Ukraine in his earlier work. 'Two Prosectors' doesn't deviate from bleakness, but is possibly his most accessible film in the manner in which he depicts a system, locked and loaded against the less powerful. If you are below in the pecking order, there you will remain, so do not go about getting ideas above your station. The tussle between the two prosecutors, on either side of the spectrum, one just beginning his journey, the other on top, could well have been the subject of a Kafka novel. Nothing is stated. Open hostility can be combated, but there's nothing you can do with a perfectly calibrated official disdain that keeps you waiting endlessly, without granting you a meeting. Adapted from political activist and gulag survivor Georgy Demidov's 1969 book, the brooding, atmospheric 'Two Prosecutors' will put you in mind of Kafka and Solzhenitsyn, and so many others who wrote movingly about a ruthless regime where human rights were turned into a joke. When Kornev requests a meeting with the prison warden, the guard can't believe it, and when he informs the man guarding a higher gate, they both burst out laughing. Some random person asking to be let into their sanctum, where they are the masters of the skeletal inmates who keep dropping dead of overwork? Preposterous. The thing with Kornev is that he just doesn't learn. He does, finally, get to meet with the USSR's top prosecutor (Vytautas Kaniuonis). But the reception is cold, and as he recounts the story of the prisoner and his quest, it gets colder still, and the consequence is chilling. What makes the well-performed 'Two Prosecutors' such a compelling watch is that it may speak of a bygone era, but with rising authoritarianism in so many parts of the world, it feels even more sharply relevant. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. 'Dossier 137', a police procedural deftly directed by Dominik Moll, has a thematic similarity with 'Two Prosecutors' in the way it shows how traditional power structures are kept in place by every single stakeholder. Those who rock the boat are considered trouble-mongers, not the actual perpetrators themselves. The French movie, also in competition, unfolds as a series of interrogations interspersed with bursts of action in Paris and the countryside. When a young man is shot and badly injured during a demonstration that turns violent, conscientious police officer Stephanie ( Lea Drucker) starts to investigate. She finds many troubling facts and a cover-up: as it is, she is part of a much-reviled group tasked to keep an eye on internal affairs, and in this instance, she finds, through a video of the incident, that her colleagues were directly involved. What follows is hard to watch as the complicit cops show that they are masters at deflection and active lying. Stephanie's superior takes her up on a fact she believes the former kept deliberately hidden: that she belongs to the same town as the victim, and that that makes her biased. Racism is at work here too, in the shape of a black cleaner who displays the weary cynicism of the oppressed. When you know you aren't going to win, what's the point of making a noise and calling attention to yourself? May as well watch cat videos, the way an old lady does in the movie, to keep the darkness at bay.
Indian Express
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
Express at Cannes: Sergei Lozintsa's brooding, atmospheric Two Prosecutors and hard-hitting police procedural Dossier 137
A succession of similar scenes, in which the protagonist is seen waiting in a hard, straight-backed chair, in dreary brown rooms ruled over by dreary brown bureaucrats, is amongst the most telling leitmotifs of Sergei Lozintsa's Cannes competition entry 'Two Prosecutors'. You can wait all you want, but in the end, Godot will keep you waiting. The film is set in 1938, 'at the height of Stalinist terror', and is about a newly-appointed idealistic prosecutor who receives a prisoner's letter written in blood, protesting his innocence. From then on, we see Kornev (Alexander Kuznetsov) attempting in all earnestness to try and meet the prisoner, who is at first only a number in a cell. The bloody weals on his body shock the young law graduate, and he sets out to meet the senior prosecutor, in the hope that the latter's intervention will help rectify matters. Loznitsa is in familiar territory, having given us glimpses into the labyrinthian workings of Russia, and his native Ukraine, in his earlier work. 'Two Prosectors' doesn't deviate from bleakness, but is possibly his most accessible film in the manner in which he depicts a system, locked and loaded, against the less powerful. If you are below in the pecking order, there you will remain, so do not go about getting ideas above your station. Also Read | Express at Cannes: Tom Cruise's Final Reckoning and a maddeningly marvellous Sound Of Falling The tussle between the two prosecutors, on either side of the spectrum, one just beginning his journey, the other on top, could well have been the subject of a Kafka novel. Nothing is stated. Open hostility can be combated, but there's nothing you can do with a perfectly-calibrated official disdain that keeps you waiting endlessly, without granting you a meeting. Adapted from political activist and gulag survivor Georgy Demidov's 1969 book, the brooding, atmospheric 'Two Prosecutors' will put you in mind of Kafka and Solzhenitsyn, and so many others who wrote movingly about a ruthless regime where human rights were turned into a joke. When Kornev requests a meeting with the prison warden, the guard can't believe it, and when he informs the man guarding a higher gate, they both burst out laughing. Some random person asking to be let into their sanctum, where they are the masters of the skeletal inmates who keep dropping dead of overwork? Preposterous. The thing with Kornev is that he just doesn't learn. He does, finally, get to meet with the USSR's top prosecutor (Vytautas Kaniuonis). But the reception is cold, and as he recounts the story of the prisoner and his quest, it gets colder still, and the consequence is chilling. What makes the well-performed 'Two Prosecutors' such a compelling watch is that it may speak of a bygone era, but with rising authoritarianism in so many parts of the world, feels even more sharply relevant. ** Absolute power corrupts absolutely. 'Dossier 137', directed by Dominik Moll, has a thematic similarity with 'Two Prosecutors' in the way it shows how traditional power structures are kept in place by every single stakeholder. Those who rock the boat are considered trouble-mongers, not the actual perpetrators themselves. The French film, also in Competition, unfolds as a series of interrogations interspersed with bursts of action in Paris and the countryside. When a young man is shot and badly injured during a demonstration that turns violent, conscientious police officer Stephanie (Lea Drucker) starts to investigate. She finds many troubling facts and a cover-up: as it is, she is part of a much-reviled group tasked to keep an eye on internal affairs, and in this instance, she finds, through a video of the incident, that her own colleagues were directly involved. Also Read | 'The only choice is to learn to embrace life, the good and the bad': Robert De Niro at Cannes What follows is hard to watch as the complicit cops show that they are masters at deflection, and active lying. Stephanie's own superior takes her up on a fact she believes the former kept deliberately hidden: that she belongs to the same town as the victim, and that that makes her biased. Racism is at work here too, in the shape of a black cleaner who displays the weary cynicism of the oppressed. When you know you aren't going to win, what's the point of making a noise and calling attention to yourself? May as well watch cat videos, the way an old lady does in the movie, to keep the darkness at bay.
