Belorusian-born, Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa speaks candidly about the filmmaker’s responsibility to bear witness in a time when facts are under siege. He is known for his historical dramas and documentaries, often exploring themes of Soviet and post-Soviet history, as well as totalitarianism.

In his latest work Two Prosecutors, the acclaimed director offers a thought-provoking look at justice in times of repression. Based on a story by Russian writer Georgy Demidov, the plot is set in 1937 during Stalin’s Great Purge. It follows newly appointed attorney Kornyev as he seeks justice for an unjustly imprisoned man. Driven by his idealistic belief in the system, Kornyev is drawn into the heart of a brutal regime, forcing him to confront the moral cost of loyalty and the corruption of justice by authoritarianism. The stark scenario serves as both a mirror and a provocation – forcing viewers to consider how justice is shaped, and sometimes distorted, by politics and systemic circumstances.

Loznitsa’s latest work premiered in Cannes, and it was reprised at Karlovy Vary, where this conversation took place.

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Lida Bach – Two Prosecutors takes place during the Soviet era. But its strong aspects of systemic critique feel strangely timely.

Sergei Loznitsa – Unfortunately, it looks like a very recent story, yes. It means that nothing happened for these almost 100 years. It looks as if we are passing through more or less the same circumstances.

LB – The story focuses on an attorney that tries to adjust systemic wrongs, but then he himself gets into the claws of the system. Do you see the story’s elliptical structure as a metaphor as well?

SL – No. It is the circumstances that we live in. You cannot fight with the system by using the same tools as the system is using against you.

LB – The story is based on a literary source by Georgy Demidov which is not very well known.

SL – Yes, but his books are! Now his first book Two Prosecutors is being published in Germany. And it already has been translated into French and Italian.

LB – How did you come across it?

SL – He wrote his novel in 1968, based on his life’s experience. He was arrested in 1938 and spent 14 years in the concentration camp of the Soviet Union, the Gulag. After years, when he was finally released – he wrote his novel. In the 1980s, the KGB confiscated all his manuscripts. He never saw any line of his texts printed. He died in 1987. After the Soviet Union collapsed, his daughter fought to get his works back. Finally, she achieved that. In 2008, this book was printed as part of a collection based on the memories of people who were in the Gulag. I just bought all the books from that collection. This one I read in 2010, and decided to make this film. This story was inside me for such a long time. Finally, I wrote the script in 2022. We shot in autumn last year, in October.

LB – What was the reason for this long time of development?

SL – I have a lot of stories in my head. I want to, but I can’t make all these films at the same time. Once I made three films at the same time, but these were documentaries. With feature films it’s difficult. It depends on budgeting and the possibility to shoot. More or less, it’s a question of money.

LB – How much did your memories of the Soviet era influence the film perspective?

SL – That’s difficult to say. To answer that, we would need a point-of-view other than my own. Of course, everything I do and think depends on my private history: on the books I’ve read, the circumstances in which I lived, and the emotions I had. And it depends on talent.

LB – Nationalism and misguided patriotism are recurring themes in your work. Why are those issues so prominent in your films? Why do they fascinate you?

SL – I try to make films about so-called unknown, unwritten or “unshown” parts of our history because our history is unpredictable. In Soviet times, the authorities rewrote history in the direction Stalin proposed. I would like to add that I made a film about this: State Funeral [2019]. It’s about Stalin’s funeral. It’s also connected to this totalitarian regime and describes this system. And I made the film The Trial [2018], about Stalin’s trial, where people wrongly accused themselves of sabotaging the Soviet power and proletariat. Their self-accusation was made under pressure in prison. This industrial party never existed. It feels like another story by Kafka. My new film stands in one line with these works. After The Trial, I wanted to shoot a film with fragments from that, such as the last sentences said by these people. It shocked me how this could have been possible.

Ultimately, I decided not to use the documentary footage of these events. The film already speaks for itself, even without any extra documentary footage. I would like to continue in this direction and make another film about this period, the people, their mistakes. Since everyone, apart from the people who know how the system works, has made mistakes. They all shared the illusion that justice exists, and they could achieve it.

LB – Would you say that justice is not really possible anymore in these current times full of corruption?

SL – This question was raised by Molière in [theatrical comedy] Tartuffe. Only Louis XIV – to whom Molière dedicated this role – could truly know who was wrong and who was not. That was thanks to his alleged direct connection to God. Today, we live in circumstances in which the truth can have many reflections. We can get lost in that, or we can lose ourselves, or some of our ground. We need something stable.

LB – Your story has an elliptical structure. Do you believe that history is bound to repeat itself?

SL – Everything that I observe around me tells me it is like that. Everything. Even this war, the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Memories and historical records of civil war on that territory already existed from 1917 until 1921 during the Russian empire. The Soviet empire already occupied this territory. And what kind of wrongs did these Soviet people do when they seized power in Ukraine. However, they lost this power. This discussion was happening 100 years ago, and it still hasn’t been solved.

You now see a different army using rockets, missiles, bombs to destroy different cities. This destruction is itself a tool of war. They further developed this tool: they made it smaller and are now using drones and the like. But the concept is the same as it was in WW2 and before that at the beginning of the WW1. Or in Guernica, one of the first and most famous examples: a Spanish city bombed to the ground by the Germans. After that, hundreds of cities were completely destroyed in Germany, and Germany completely bombed others. Rotterdam, Coventry, and London were destroyed… and we did not learn anything from that time.

We still believe that we can use this kind of weapon and use it against them. I made a film about this subject, based on W.G. Sebald’s essay The Natural History of Destruction. It’s the title of this essay as well as the title of my film [2022]. I demonstrated it all before this war even started. We made that film in 2022. In 2017, I wrote down my idea for the first time. The answers we got from different organisations were: “What is new about this topic? Everything has been said about that. We solved our problem. We know who was guilty, and it will never happen again.” And five years later …

LB – Your film has a very authentic look, with deliberately drab settings. How much is setting, and how much original locations?

SL – All the prison scenes we shot in a real prison. This prison was closed because it doesn’t comply with EU law.

LB – That’s what it looks like on screen!

SL – It’s a prison built during the time of the Tsar, around 1905. As a location it was great, but to be there was not. There is still the feeling of the individuals who had to do time there. Their energy still lingers there. Most parts of the film were shot there. It’s in Latvia, in Riga.

LB – Your film consists of very long set pieces, many of them about waiting. All the time the protagonist has to wait for something to happen. What role do bureaucracy and procrastination play in your vision of oppression and autocratic systems?

SL – Waiting means we spend time without anything happening. It’s a moment when we feel time. It’s always about time. This system purposefully steals our time by being organised like that. When they put somebody in a cell, they steal time. They steal any life activity of that person. So it plays a huge role which I tried to reproduce. Prison is about stasis. That’s why the shot is static. Prison is a black square [draws a square with his fingers in the air]. Malevich.

LB – Yes, the painting by Kazimir Malevich!

SL – Prison is about keys and locks, the sound of steps, corridors. Once I was in a prison when I shot my film A Gentle Creature [2017]. It was a very strange feeling and I don’t want to repeat that experience. In the film, the head of prison staff shows us around and the prisoners. Like a zoo with the same animal as you or as me. For we are animals. [Looks at the time] Soon I have to run.

LB – May I just ask one final question? What’s your next project?

SL – For my next project, I would like to continue this topic and make a film based on a novel by the same writer. You will see it maybe next year.

LB – Hopefully we will! I won’t hold you any longer. Thank you so much for this interview, Sergei!

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Sergei Loznitsa is pictured at the top of this interview, courtesy of Film Servis Karlovy Vary; the other image is a still from Two Prosecutors.