Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa‘s Two Prosecutors, his adaptation of Georgy Demidov’s eponymous novel, is set in the Soviet Union in 1937 during Stalin’s Great Purge and tells the story of a young local prosecutor and dedicated communist who starts to question his undying faith in the regime.
The film, which debuted at Cannes, has been playing in the 59th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.
“I would like to continue with this topic, based on the same novel,” says Loznitsa of the film, which explores Stalin’s tyranny and totalitarianism more broadly, in an almost Kafkaesque way. “I would like to make my next film about the same repression system, but from the other side, from the side of the people who are prisoners, who were tortured and interrogated in prison. And about what kind of decisions they make because everybody knows that it’s all bullshit.”
The filmmaker points to authoritarian tactics that force innocent people admit to things they’ve never done. “It’s absolutely nonsense because the authorities know [these people] are innocent, but they were interrogated and pushed, beaten and asked to sign wrong confessions and statements like ‘I prepared this revolution. I work for, I don’t know, the Japanese Secret Service, and we dug a tunnel from London to Bombay. This is [actually] a real statement which was signed.”
The Orange Lampshade is the title that Loznitsa is envisioning for that movie. Why? “You will see,” he simply replied. But it sounds like it is a reference to a Soviet design feature of those times.
Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa
VALERY HACHE_AFP via Getty Images
But first, Two Prosecutors is set to screen in cinemas in various parts of the world. Janus Films acquired the film for North America in Cannes but didn’t immediately detail a release date.
What does Loznitsa expect the U.S. audience’s reaction to be? “I think they will recognize recent times — the direction of America now with this authoritarian leader.”
Concluded Loznitsa: “It reflects this story, which is set in the 1930s, like 100 years ago, which means that not a lot of things have changed in the world, and people are not changing.”