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This is a film about Russia, set in Russia, and made by a filmmaker educated there, yet it was produced by France, Germany, the Netherlands, Latvia, Romania, and Lithuania. And that is very apparent with the mass of production vanity plates prior to an opening shot.

“Two Prosecutors”’ director Sergei Loznitsa claims Ukraine as the closest element of his post-Soviet heritage, and resides in Berlin, but he has all the attributes of a dissident filmmaker, criticizing and scrutinizing something he intimately knows. It would be nice to see Russian-produced films made under a culture of free expression, but our relative compensation are programmes and films with English dialogue like “Chernobyl” and “Doctor Zhivago”, numerous bad ones with worse accents, and also “Two Prosecutors”, shot in Latvia, but authentic as anything.

Loznitsa made arguably his best film to date with the astonishingly prescient “Donbass” in 2018; the pandemic and his extraordinary jones...

You don’t need to wield a hammer and sickle to feel the weight of Soviet tyranny hanging over Two Prosecutors, a solemn Stalin-era drama from Sergei Loznitsa that doubles as a metaphor for the kind of oppression tormenting Russia right now.

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. For those familiar with that period, nothing in the movie, which was adapted from a 1969 book by physicist and gulag survivor Georgy Demidov, may seem surprising. But this Cannes competition entry is more about the journey than the destination, revealing what it was like to live at a time when personal freedom was all but extinguished by rampant authoritarianism.

The first shot of the film is of a prison door opening and closing,...

Sergei Loznitsa’s forensically objective, intellectually nuanced documentaries tend to stand in stark contrast to his fictional output; in films like My Joy, In the Fog and Donbass, the Ukrainian director is inclined to put his cards on the table, usually addressing his signature subject: the abject failure of the Russian state. Two Prosecutors follows in that tradition, being a very slow and very talky chamber piece that could be the most terrifying comedy that Aki Kaurismäki never made, or a Chaplin-esque horror film about the evils of bureaucracy in a world ruled by morons. This time, Loznitsa doesn’t just have the Kremlin in his sights; Two Prosecutors is one of his most accessible films to date, with relevance to every country wrestling with authoritarian political parties right now.

Based on a novella by Soviet and political activist Georgy Demidov (1908-1987), Two Prosecutors begins with a screen credit noting...

Rezo Gigineishvili’s “Patient #1” is the 2023 winner of the annual Werner Herzog Film Award.

Set at the end of the Soviet era, the film focuses on the decline in power of Konstantin Chernenko, a Russian leader with failing health who is surrounded by a large medical team. He is old and frail, but has a tight grip on power. He is waging a war in Afghanistan, has a nuclear button and can take the entire world to the grave with him. It is convenient for both the elites and the secret services to keep the leader alive and various groups are scoring political points.

The cast includes Aleksandr Filippenko, Olga Makeeva, Inna Churikova, Igor Chernevich and Sergey Gilev. The film is produced by Archil Gelovani, Sergey Yahontov for Georgian outfit Independent Film Project.

Gigineishvili previously directed “Hostages” (2017) which premiered at the Berlinale and participated in more than 30 international film festivals including Telluride,...