It’s a film about the Lenin-Stalin era, but it also reflects ongoing events in the world today, extremist ideology, the Manichean struggle of liberalism against totalitarianism, and truths that no longer hold sway.

“TWO PROSECUTORS” (directed by Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa) was adapted from a book written by Georgy Demidov, a physicist, political prisoner and writer, in 1968. Demidov had spent fourteen years in the gulag. In the eighties, the manuscript was confiscated by the KGB, to be returned to his family about a decade earlier. Once published, it ended up in Loznitsa’s hands. Decades later, he adapted it to the screen and made this movie, running in competition.

The first prosecutor, our district attorney, Kornev (played by Alexandre Kouznetsov, who previously appeared in “Leto”), is a young prosecutor sent from his home region of Briansk to Moscow’s state prison to investigate prisoner abuse at the hands of the guards. A letter by a prisoner sent to the Soviet apparatus to complain about such abuse visited upon him ended up not being destroyed, along with thousands of other letters that prison officials burned. When the letter reached Kornev, he began an investigation.

Sergei Loznitsa

In Moscow, Vyshinski (Anatoliy Belyy) is prosecutor number two, the attorney general. He’s the person who can get things moving for Kornev’s investigation, launch an inquiry and punish any wrongdoing. But, once Kornev is finally able to get some facetime with him, Vyshinski is polite but unmoved by Kornev’s pleas that something is going on inside Soviet jails and that prisoners are being abused. He nevertheless offers to look into the matter if Kornev can provide proof. Their meeting about to end, Vyshinski offers to pay for Kornev’s train ride to Briansk. He accepts, unaware of what would come next.

Loznitsa’s films are spare and can be unrelatable but I enjoyed this film, especially on the strength of the final chapter, on the train.  And, “TWO PROSECUTORS” supplemented my awareness of Soviet-era Russia. In the last few years, I’ve read “Darkness at noon” and watched “Mr. Jones,” directed by Agnieszka Holland. The Gulag Archipelago is next on my list. Where Russia is concerned, it’s important to know its history. The past and the present seem juxtaposed in that country. Once the Russia-Ukraine conflict finally ends, it’ll remain to be seen what the future will hold.