This film, directed by Sergei Loznitsa, is amazing, especially for anybody trying to understand what happened in Russia in the great purges of revolutionaries in the late 1930s. People may not know but the majority of the central committee, that led the revolution in 1917, were accused of having been German agents, and those that hadn’t died were shot.

Most of the film takes place in an prison in Bryansk run by the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD). It shows the near starved prisoners doing forced labour. One of them is given the job of burning a sack of papers. They have obviously been turned in to paper planes. As he unfolds them he reads some. They are pleas to Stalin, pleading their innocence, they say confessions have been forced out of them. One says he is not part of the Trotsky, Bukharin plot, another says he has been a loyal manager of a factory, they all say they are long time Communist Party members. This shows that even towards there ends they believed that the trials were an aberration.

Somehow the prisoner sneaks out one letter written in blood, asking for a prosecutor to look at his case.We then see a newly appointed , young prosecutor arriving at the prison, trying to interview this prisoner.

The scenes of bureaucracy are amazing, with delays at every point, but he is determined, and does end up interviewing the prisoner, who shows his torture, but will not sign a confession, he says he is the last survivor of the old Bolshevik Committee. He is urged to go to Moscow and plead with the Politburo, about this grotesque injustice.

He does this, and goes through the same bureaucratic procedures.

He finally meets the Prosecutor General, Vishinsky.

He is told that even from his high position he can’t rule on the NKVD, without physical proof. So he says go back to Bryansk, in one of his allocated carriages. I will not reveal the end, but say this:

Vishinsky is a real historical figure, who was a major force in the purges.

Some of the filming was done in Latvia, which he organised in to the Soviet Union, also in Roumania, ditto.

Go to see this film, if you don’t know the history, if you do it shows how the only way to create the aberration the USSR became was purging the revolutionaries, alongside those who were not corrupt. All this with the support of Communist Parties all over the world. There is a huge amount of literature from those in the Fourth International who fought against it.

Official trailer: https://www.imdb.com/video/vi3621899033/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk