Zwei Staatsanwälte (2025)
Genre: Drama / History
Duration: 117 minuten
Alternative title: Two Prosecutors
Country:
France / Germany / Netherlands / Latvia / Romania
Directed by: Sergey Loznitsa
Stars: Aleksandr Kuznetsov, Vytautas Kaniušonis and Valentin Novopolskij
IMDb score:
7,1 (2.636)
Releasedate: 24 September 2025
Zwei Staatsanwälte plot
The year is 1937, during the Great Terror in the Soviet Union. The recently graduated lawyer and idealist Kornev wants to fight for justice, but during his first case he already comes up against the gruesome reality of Stalinism. He investigates the case of a prisoner whose desperate letter he got his hands on. Kornev goes to Moscow to denounce the abuses, but his search for justice leads him to an unexpected fate.
Actors and actresses
Kornev
Stepniak and The Man with the Wooden Leg
Vyshynsky
The deputy
Prison Governor
Chatterbox
Old Prisoner
Corridor Warder
Reviews & comments
De filosoof
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- 2569 messages
- 1759 votes
I really liked Loznitsa's earlier films Krotkaya and Donbass, but I find this one very disappointing. The film's premise is interesting, though: in Stalin's Soviet Union, with its purge of political enemies, as an inspector you had better keep a low profile, because you don't know who is friend and who is foe, as the counter-revolutionaries who have seized power are still acting in the name of communist ideology and the law. That creates a tense, paranoid atmosphere, but the film is incredibly slow, so very little happens: the film's concept is barely sufficient for a short film, and certainly not for a feature film. Only in the middle does the film briefly pick up some pace when the protagonist is told a story in a train carriage full of impoverished, somewhat bizarre-looking figures.
I am afraid that Loznitsa considered his political message too important to keep it short (or he wanted to make the bureaucracy of the Soviet Union relatable by making the viewer wait just as the protagonist has to wait repeatedly): the film may represent the new authoritarian leaders staging their coup against democracy in the name of democracy, and the way political prisoners are treated in the film (torture that forces them to confess or otherwise die of 'natural causes' such as a heart attack) inevitably brings to mind Navalny's fate. But none of it is very convincing.
Translated from Dutch · View original
mrklm
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- 12367 messages
- 10458 votes
In 1937, an old man [Ivgeny Terletsky] manages to smuggle a cry for help written in blood by political prisoner Stepniak [Aleksandr Filippenko] out of prison. The newly graduated, brand-new local public prosecutor Korneyev [Alexander Kuznetsov] takes the case seriously. But he needs all his patience and perseverance; first to speak to Stepniak, then to bring the case before public prosecutor Vyshinsky [Anatoliy Beliy]. The deliberately slow pace emphasizes the delaying tactics of the authorities involved. This tests your patience but also provides understated humor, especially in the public prosecutor's waiting room. Colorful supporting characters liven up this theatrical yet captivating reconstruction of bureaucracy in a repressive and corrupt dictatorship.
Translated from Dutch · View original
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