Film
Two Prosecutors
Deux procureurs
Soviet Union, 1937. A note written in blood reaches a newly appointed provincial prosecutor, who decides to investigate what is happening inside his own prison and then to take his findings to Moscow. He believes the system will want to know.
About
Sergei Loznitsa adapted Georgy Demidov's novella, written in 1969 and unpublished until 2009, for his first fiction feature since Donbass. It competed at Cannes in 2025, financed across France, Germany, the Netherlands, Latvia, Romania and Lithuania — the configuration a Ukrainian director working on Soviet history now has to assemble.
Aleksandr Kuznetsov plays Kornev, a young prosecutor in Brjansk in 1937 who receives a letter written in blood and smuggled out of the local prison. He goes in to see the prisoner, and what he learns sends him to Moscow to report it. Loznitsa films the corridors, waiting rooms and antechambers of the apparatus in long static takes and a boxy frame, and lets the horror accumulate through procedure: forms, queues, courteous officials, doors that open onto other doors.
Reviewers described it as the coldest and most controlled thing he has made, and the least interested in relief. It sits with Kontinental '25 and I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians in the catalogue's strand of Eastern European films about what states do and what citizens agree not to see.
Where to Watch
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Streaming availability via JustWatch. Last checked 2026-08-30.
Top Cast
Aleksandr Kuznetsov
Kornev
Aleksandr Filippenko
Stepniak and the Man with the Wooden Leg
Anatoliy Belyy
Vyshynsky
Andris Keišs
The Deputy
Vytautas Kaniušonis
Prison Director
Awards, Festivals & Mentions
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Nominee — Palme d'Or — Cannes Film Festival (2025)
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Cannes Film Festival 2025 — In Competition
