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This film, presented as part of a Close-up dedicated to Sergei Loznitsa, lays bare the “banality of evil” and is devastatingly relevant today, as Ukrainian people are once again being subjected to the violence of barbarian invaders.
The Kiev Trial, or “Kiev Nuremberg,” took place in January 1946 in the Soviet Union and was one of the first post-war trials convicting German Nazis and their collaborators. Fifteen criminals, found guilty of atrocities deemed “crimes against humanity,” were tried in case No. 1679. Using previously unseen archival footage, Sergei Loznitsa reconstructs key moments of the trial, including statements from the defendants and testimonies from survivors of Auschwitz and Babi Yar.
Sergei Loznitsa was born in 1964 in Belarus, he grew up in Kiev and studied at the famous film school VGIK in Moscow. His career as a filmmaker started off in 1996 with shorter documentary works followed in 2002 by his documentary feature The Settlement. The premiere of his fiction feature debut came in 2010 with My Joy that premiered in the main competition at the Cannes Film Festival, where two years later, In the Fog (2012) won the FIPRESCI Prize. His films have been screened and received awards at various film festivals internationally. He won Best Director at Cannes for his fourth feature film Donbass in 2018. Since 1996 Loznitsa completed 23 award-winning documentaries and five fiction films.