Sergei Loznitsa

Soviet Union, 1937. Thousands of letters from detainees falsely accused by the regime are burned in a prison cell. Against all odds, one of them reaches its destination, upon the desk of the newly appointed local prosecutor, Alexander Kornev. Kornev does his utmost to meet the prisoner, a victim of corrupt agents of the secret police, the NKVD. A dedicated Bolshevik of integrity, the young prosecutor suspects foul play. His quest for justice will take him all the way to the office of the Attorney General in Moscow. In the age of the great Stalinist purges, this is the plunge of a man into the corridors of a totalitarian regime that does not bear said name.Read More »

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10 years after the release of his epic film MAIDAN, Sergei Loznitsa resumes his Ukrainian chronicles by documenting the country’s struggle against the Russian invasion. Shot over a 2-year period, the film portrays the life of the civilian population all over Ukraine. THE INVASION presents a unique and ultimate statement of Ukrainian resilience in the face of barbaric invasion. In the second part of his Ukrainian diptych, Loznitsa paints a monumental canvas of a nation determined to defend its right to exist.Read More »

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Documentary about Lithuania in the years 1989 to 1991, when the Baltic country broke away from the Soviet Union. Because of the peaceful protests with much singing, this period was later also called the ‘singing revolution’. As one of the founders of the independence movement, Vytautas Landsbergis was at the heart of the historical upheaval. His incisive reflections are complemented by extensive archive footage of demonstrations, party congresses and the Soviet military intervention.Read More »

Synopsis:
There are places in Europe that have remained as painful memories of the past – factories where humans were turned into ash. These places are now memorial sites that are open to the public and receive thousands of tourists every year. The film’s title refers to the eponymous novel written by W.G. Sebald, dedicated to the memory of Holocaust. This film is an observation of the visitors to a memorial site that has been founded on the territory of a former concentration camp. Why do they go there? What are they looking for?Read More »

PLOT: This movie is about a day in life of the settlement for people with mental problems. Located in a peaceful countryside, it conveys an image of a pure, happy place, where people live and work together, in complete harmony. But there is a growing unexplainable feeling of anxiety and hopelessness.Read More »

Based on the book by German writer W.G. Sebald, examines the perception and processing of the phenomenon of mass destruction of the German civilian population in European post-war literature.Read More »

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In his latest documentary, Sergei Loznitsa takes viewers to Nazi-occupied Ukraine and, working exclusively with uniquely restored archive materials, shows us the background of the tragic events that took place just outside occupied Kyiv in September 1941 – the massacre of more than 33,000 Jewish residents. Loznitsa’s seventh film shown at Cannes offers a chilling report on these events and places them into a broader context. When memory turns into oblivion, when the past overshadows the future, it is the voice of cinema that articulates the truth.Read More »

Using archive images, Sergei Loznitsa revisits the gala evenings organized at the Palais Garnier in the fifties and sixties. Between prestige and protocol, these evenings gathered both celebrities and ordinary people who came by the thousands from the Place de l’Opéra to watch this spectacle, of which the director amusingly brings out the irony…Read More »

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Unique, mostly unseen before, archive footage from March 1953, presents the funeral of Joseph Stalin as the culmination of the dictator’s personality cult. The film addresses the issue of Stalin’s personality cult as a form of terror-induced delusion. It gives an insight into the nature of the regime and its legacy, still haunting the contemporary world.Read More »