Process plot
The Great Purge took place in the Soviet Union between 1936 and 1938. In those years, Stalin had millions of subjects executed or perished in penal camps. The show trial that took place in Moscow in 1930 was a harbinger of this state terror. A group of economists and engineers were accused of being members of the Industrial Party and colluding with French Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré to stage a coup d'état. For days, the suspects were interrogated in a packed hall as soldiers marched outside and slogans were shouted. For this documentary, filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa uses the recordings of this show process to immerse the viewer in the totalitarian reality of that time.