In the days immediately following the death of Joseph Stalin in March 1953, countless citizens flooded Red Square to mourn their leader’s loss and witness his burial. Although the parade of pomp and circumstance was captured in detail by hundreds of cameramen, their footage has remained largely unseen. Working with dozens of hours of this revelatory archival material, now stunningly restored specifically for this film, Sergei Loznitsa has crafted an immersive re-creation of a key moment in Soviet history. State Funeral presents an all-too-timely commentary on the terrifying absurdities inherent to totalitarianism and the cult of personality.
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.
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.