Overview
- The feature reaches French cinemas on November 5 after a Cannes competition berth, extending its festival momentum into theatrical release.
- Drawn from a short story by former political prisoner Gueorgui Demidov, the film adapts testimony shaped by years in the gulag and writings once confiscated by the KGB.
- The narrative follows Kornev, a freshly minted young magistrate, as he confronts the machinery of the 1937 purges and the logic of show trials.
- Critics highlight an austere style—4:3 framing, long fixed takes and muted colors—that builds an oppressive, Kafkaesque atmosphere with flashes of dark irony.
- Loznitsa explicitly links the film’s methods of repression to today’s Russia, with reviews noting it was shot in Russian with exiled actors and is unlikely to be released in Russia or Ukraine.