The Kiev Trial – Films – Visions du Réel

Киевский процесс

Sergei Loznitsa
Netherlands, Ukraine | 2022 | 106 min
Languages : Ukrainian, Russian, German
Subtitles : French, English

The Soviet “Nuremberg”, contemporaneous with the trial of Nazi leaders, took place in January 1946 in Kyiv. In his latest re-edited film to date, Loznitsa reconstructs the key moments from a corpus of unpublished archives in order to better expose the “banality of evil”, at a time when the Russian invader continues to commit atrocities on Ukrainian territory.

“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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