The Kiev Trial – Films – Visions du Réel

Киевский процесс

Sergei Loznitsa
Niederlande, Ukraine | 2022 | 106 min
Sprachen : Ukrainisch, Russisch, Deutsch
Untertitel : Französisch, Englisch

Das sowjetische „Nürnberg“ fand im Januar 1946 in Kiew statt, zeitgleich mit den Prozessen gegen die führenden Vertreter des NS-Regimes. Um die „Banalität des Bösen“ zu verdeutlichen, rekonstruiert Loznitsa in seinem bislang letzten „Remontage“-Film aus bislang unveröffentlichtem Archivmaterial die Schlüsselmomente dieses Prozesses. Gleichzeitig verüben die russischen Besatzer auf ukrainischem Boden Gräueltaten.

“Only a sculptor could capture his anguish”, recalls one of the witnesses called to the stand, describing to the audience and the prosecutors of the military tribunal convened in Kiev in early 1946 the fear etched on the face of one of the victims of the Nazi atrocities that took place in autumn 1941. In the background, the 15 defendants listen in the dock, impassive, incomprehending. Just one of the previously unseen archival records uncovered by Sergei Loznitsa. A continuation of his previous film, almost wordless yet still sound-designed according to his well-honed method, The Kiev Trial, which focuses on the extermination of Ukrainian Jews, retraces the key moments of the “Kiev Nuremberg”, from the reading of the charges to the final public execution by hanging. Here, then, words pour onto a judicial stage lit by powerful floodlights, amplified by the interpreters’ translations. By examining the testimonies over time and drawing on the remarkable framing work of the Soviet cameramen of the period, the Ukrainian filmmaker explores the evocative power of speech, conjuring images of the atrocities without showing them. An inverse approach to that adopted by the Americans at Nuremberg…

Emmanuel Chicon

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Today We Are Going To Build A House, 1996