Poster for the ninth film I viewed at the
50th Hong Kong International Film Festival
Two Prosecutors (France-Germany-Netherlands-Latvia-Romania-Lithuania-Ukraine, 2025)
- Sergei Loznitsa, director and co-scriptwriter (with Georgy Demidov)
- Starring: Alexander Kutznetsov, Aleksandr Filippenko, Anatoliy Beliy
- Part of the HKIFF's The Masters program
For much of Two Prosecutors, one only sees a single prosecutor on screen: Kornev (portrayed by Alexander Kutznetsove, whose nose looks like that of someone who emerged much the worse from a brutal boxing match or game of rugby!), a young government prosecutor only three months into his career. Naive and idealistic, after coming into possession of a letter written in blood by a political prisoner, he decides to go see and hear the man: a former local party stalwart who had visited and given a speech about truth and Bolshevism at Kornev's law school.
Despite the prison head trying to dissuade him from doing so in multiple ways, Kornev stubbornly persists in meeting with a man considered so dangerous that he's been put in solitary confinement far away from other prisoners and watched over by multiple guards. This despite Stepniak (essayed by Aleksandr Filippenko) being elderly and physically weak, and, in fact being pretty close to death's door.
It's pretty obvious that Stepniak has been physically tortured, and so badly that his internal organs are badly messed up. It's less certain why the old Bolshevik ended up being among the victims of what looked to have been a power struggle that saw the NKVD (secret police; precursor of the KGB) infiltrate and take control of the Communist Party apparatus in their city of Bryansk. In any case, Stepniak adamantly maintained that if only his tale was told to Joseph Stalin, he would be freed and wrongs righted. And asks Kornev to do just that. Or, at the very least, appeal to someone in the central government over in Moscow to come clean up the locally centered mess.
Kornev, an upright, card-carrying member of the Communist Party, agrees to do so. And journeys to Moscow to report all this to the man who's effectively his top boss: the Procurator General, Andrey Vyshinsky (Anatoli Beliy plays the film's second titular prosecutor, and real life historical figure). But when they meet... well, let's just say that this scene is as chilling, if more so, than the moments when Stepniak shows Kornev the torture marks on his body as well as arms and legs.
Those who know that 1937, the year that Two Prosecutors is set, was the height of what's known as Stalin's Great Terror (or Purge) will have known early on where this film adaptation of a novella by Georgy Demidov, a Soviet physicist-writer-political prisoner was heading. But it's the journey, rather than the destination, that really matters with regards to this tale. And director Loznitsa masterfully keep's one attention and stokes one's mounting horror regarding how things will end for the honorable Kornev for this gripping work's entire running time.
By the way, that director Loznitsa was unable to make this film in his native Ukraine or Russia tells you speaks volumes about the current state of those parts of the former Soviet Union. Equally clear is how Two Prosecutors is a strong indictment of the kind of regime that punishes righteous and idealistic folks who seek to do good unto one's fellow citizens.
My rating for this film: 7.5
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