Sergei Loznitsa presented the film “The Kyiv Trial” at the Venice Film Festival
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His painting is based on an archival chronicle about the execution of the Nazis in 1946 in the capital of Ukraine
In the out-of-competition program of the 79th Venice Film Festival, which is taking place these days on the island of Lido, the premiere of Sergei Loznitsa’s edited film “The Kyiv Trial” about the tribunal of the Kyiv military district in 1946, held in the House of the Red Army, took place. It is called Kyiv Nuremberg.
In 2016, when the 70th anniversary of the trial was celebrated, many materials related to those events were made public. Sergey Loznitsa started work on his film in 2021, it was ready in January. Now the exact dates are of particular importance, and Loznica emphasizes them so that no one has any thoughts about the conjuncture. In any case, his instinct, like a real documentary filmmaker, is unconditional. He knows how to shoot in time and bring to light what many seem to know.
In recent years, while preparations are underway for his big game project Babi Yar, Loznitsa has been releasing two editing films a year based on Soviet chronicles. Each of them alternately gets to the Cannes, then to the Venice Film Festival. And now the Lido hosted the premiere of “The Kyiv Process” in the main festival palace of the Grande Hall, and this is like a temporary stop in the race of feature films.
The Kyiv Trial is based on the chronicle of the Russian Film and Photo Archive in Krasnogorsk, in particular, on an hour and a half film depicting the fateful trial, filmed by several cameramen whose names are sometimes lost in history, as well as on materials from the Central State Film and Photo Archive of Ukraine. As happened more than once with the paintings of Loznitsa, connoisseurs instantly recognized the well-known chronicle, which was used without radical introduction.
In Loznitsa’s film, we see German officers in the dock giving orders to shoot Soviet people. They take turns approaching the microphone. Translators and guards with ingenuous, simple faces are changing. One after another, the Nazis come to the podium, testify, admit or not admit to their own involvement in the murder of hundreds and thousands of people, they say how they robbed, raped, burned in Rovno, Lvov, Pervomaisk, Korosten and other cities of Soviet Ukraine. Eyewitnesses recall the operation to exterminate three thousand children in Lvov, the execution in Melitopol, how they threw living children into ditches, how they drove people to Germany. The priest testifies. He tells how the church was plundered. Tamara Durakova recalls how she was whipped. Another witness tells how she miraculously survived the mass execution, and then got out of the ravine. To the laughter of a large hall filled with Soviet people, they recall the German commandant, who appeared at the wedding naked and with a pistol in his hands.
One of the Germans thanks the NKVD for their sensitive attitude. Another in the last word addresses the Soviet people with a request to help defeat fascism: “Russian people, I ask you to help me with this.” An oath is heard from the podium to do everything to avoid a repetition of history. A sentence is passed – execution by hanging, although the Criminal Code of that time provided only for execution. But here is a special situation. Applause thunders in the hall. We must see the faces of the Germans at this moment.
The finale shows the public execution of 12 Nazis on January 29, 1946 on the central square of Kyiv, which has changed its name more than once (now it is Maidan Nezalezhnosti). About 200 thousand Soviet people gathered to look at the death of the Nazis. The streets are filled with people, the people sentenced to death are being taken to the place of execution in cars. Cars drive up to the scaffold and quickly drive off. The sentence has been carried out. People rejoice. The bodies of the hanged shudder in convulsions. The sea of people is swaying, it is scary to look at the crowd of people, reminiscent of Khodynka.
Stalin is not mentioned in the film. We see only his portrait. But on his orders, a decree of April 19, 1943, signed by Kalinin, appeared, according to which the Nazi invaders, guilty of killing and torturing the Soviet civilian population and captured Red Army soldiers, as well as traitors to the motherland, were supposed to be publicly executed by hanging in front of the people, so that people could commit an act of retribution and distract from the needs of the country destroyed after the war.
Sergei Loznitsa has always considered himself a Ukrainian director. He studied in Kyiv and lived for a long time, although he was born in Belarus and spent several years in Leningrad, filming movies there. In recent years he has been living and working in Berlin. After the February events, the Ukrainian Film Academy deprived him of his membership in its ranks, demanded that the world film community not consider him a Ukrainian filmmaker anymore. This is due to the fact that Loznitsa urged not to fall into madness, not to judge people by their passport, but only by their actions. And this is despite the fact that in his films he is by no means loyal to Russian politics. By the way, about the abolition of Russian culture. In Venice, the premiere of the film “Couple” about the correspondence between Leo Tolstoy and his wife Sofya Andreevna, filmed by 92-year-old American director Frederick Weissman, took place.
Newspaper headline:
Tale of the 12 Hanged Men
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