Film Forum

Soviet Union, 1937: A newly appointed, idealistic young prosecutor is spurred to meet a prison inmate after reading a desperate appeal scrawled in blood. The prosecutor recognizes this prisoner as a former law school professor—and is told a mortifying account of abuse and betrayal perpetrated by the secret police. He promises to report this injustice to the Attorney General in Moscow... but doesn’t realize the bureaucratically murderous trap he’s stepped in to. Based upon a long-unpublished novella by Soviet gulag survivor Georgy Demidov, TWO PROSECUTORS paints a hypnotic, chilling, blackly comic portrait of the mechanisms of Great Purge-era tyranny, with a potent contemporary resonance.

Presented with support from The Ada Katz Fund for Literature in Film and The Ashes and Diamonds Fund for Eastern European Film
 
2025     118 MIN.     FRANCE / GERMANY / THE NETHERLANDS / LATVIA / ROMANIA / LITHUANIA
JANUS FILMS     IN RUSSIAN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES

Trailer

Reviews

CRITIC’S PICK “Sergei Loznitsa’s novelistic, confidently imagined investigative drama is an instant classic in the annals of film and literature about the systemic abuses of state power, specifically by a totalitarian government. Adapted from a 1969 novella by Georgy Demidov, a physicist who survived the Soviet gulags, it’s at once faithful to its setting and portrayed with an elemental clarity that lends a fable-like, even dreamlike quality—a nightmare from which he is trying to awake.”
– Nicolas Rapold, The New York Times

“Set in the Stalinist purges in the Soviet Union in the 1937, though clearly as much about Putin’s Russia as Stalin’s... Loznitsa holds you rapt with brutal faces, restless camera work, meticulous filmmaking, shivers of bitter wit, and scenes of characters just talking that set your heart to racing. This is the kind of international title that enriches American moviegoing life.”
– Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

“SUPERBLY CHILLING... Loznitsa’s methods are grim and exacting, but the effect is never monotonous; there are shivers of Hitchcockian suspense, plus a whispery cackle of satire that veers towards the Kafkaesque.”
– Justin Chang, The New Yorker
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“A bitter and bracing tale of Stalinist terror... the slowly mesmerizing and Kafkaesque story of a young lawyer seeking justice in 1937, at the height of Stalin’s brutal purges.”
– Bilge Ebiri, Vulture
Read full review.

“One of [Loznitsa’s] most accessible films to date, with relevance to every country wrestling with authoritarian political parties right now.”
– Damon Wise, Deadline

“A darkly absurdist odyssey through the Soviet totalitarian nightmare.”
– Jessica Kiang, Variety

“The effectiveness and subtle suspense of Loznitsa’s visuals are matched by the chamber-piece intensity of the characters’ verbal face-offs, dense with specialist jargon and gallows humor, and not giving a damn if you can’t keep up.”
– David Katz, IndieWire

“[A] crisply made shaggy dog story, with its bleak sense of humor, somehow felt like the movie of the moment... a bleak shout of futility that’s also strangely, bitterly funny.”
– Stephanie Zacharek, TIME (“The 12 Best Movies of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival”)

“Impeccably directed and impressively acted, this slow-burn story of political injustice is filled to the brim with atmosphere—specifically the stifling, claustrophobic atmosphere of the U.S.S.R. at the height of Stalin’s Great Purge.”
– Jordan Mintzer, The Hollywood Reporter

“Provocative... darkly amusing, ultimately disturbing exploration of soulless bureaucracy.”
– Nikki Baughan, Screen International