In the organizer's words:

The descent of the young public prosecutor Korniev into the dense web of intrigue, tyranny and authoritarian rule in the Stalinist regime has already been celebrated in international reviews since the Cannes Film Festival 2025.

The dark political drama will be released in German cinemas on 18.12.25 and the premiere of the film in the presence of director Sergei Loznitsa will take place at Hamburg's Studio Kino on 19.12.25 to coincide with the release.

Soviet Union, 1937

Thousands of letters from prisoners falsely accused by the regime are burned in a prison cell. Despite all odds, one of them reaches its destination, the desk of the newly appointed local prosecutor Alexander Korniev.

Korniev does everything in his power to meet the prisoner, a victim of agents of the NKVD secret police. The young prosecutor, a committed Bolshevik with integrity, suspects foul play. His quest for justice leads him to the office of the Prosecutor General in Moscow. In the age of the great Stalinist purges, this is the fall of a man into the corridors of a totalitarian regime that does not bear that name.