Pushkin House presents the British premiere of Sergei Loznitsa's The Kiev Trial.
The Kiev Trial, also known as the “Kiev Nuremberg”, took place in January of 1946 in the Soviet Union, and was one of the first post-war trials convicting German Nazis and their collaborators. Fifteen criminals, guilty of atrocities which were later identified by the Nuremberg trials as “crimes against humanity”, faced justice. Using unique, previously unseen archival footage, Sergei Loznitsa reconstructs key moments of the proceedings, including statements of the defendants and testimonies of the witnesses, among them survivors of Auschwitz and Babi Yar. The film 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.
This event is part of Witnessing History, a comprehensive programme celebrating the multifaceted oeuvre of Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa, taking place from 2–10 June. Loznitsa has established himself as one of Europe’s leading filmmakers, producing numerous award-winning documentaries and feature films over a twenty-five-year career. In his work, he dares to dispassionately consider the most painful and important pages of history without compromising the current social and political agenda.
The screening will take place at Ciné Lumière and will be followed by a Q&A with Sergei Loznitsa.
FILMMAKER’S BIOGRAPHY
Sergei Loznitsa is a Ukrainian film director who was born in 1964 in Baranovichi (USSR). He grew up in Kyiv, where he graduated from the Kyiv Polytechnic and worked as a scientist. In 1997, he graduated from the Russian State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) in Moscow, where he studied feature filmmaking. Sergei Loznitsa has been making films since 1996, and by now he has directed 26 award-winning documentaries and four fiction films. In 2018, Loznitsa received the prize for Best Directing of the Un Certain Regard section of Festival de Cannes for his fourth feature film, Donbass (2018). Sergei’s feature-length documentaries Maidan (2014) and Natural History of Destruction (2022) had their world premieres at Festival de Cannes, while The Event (2015), Austerlitz (2016), The Trial (2018), State Funeral (2019) and The Kiev Trial (2022) were presented at the Venice International Film Festival. Sergei Loznitsa continues to work in both documentary and fiction genres.