“Set in the Stalinist purges in the Soviet Union in 1937, though clearly as much about Putin’s Russia as Stalin’s. . . . Sergei Loznitsa holds you rapt with brutal faces, restless camera work, meticulous filmmaking” (Manohla Dargis, New York Times). “Summoned with a blood-written note smuggled out of a prison block, an idealistic state lawyer (Alexander Kuznetsov) pushes past the prison’s leery authorities to interview an elderly, broken-down Bolshevik (Aleksandr Filippenko). The young attorney, determined to expose the miscarriages of justice that landed the man in confinement, finds the eye of the state turned on him instead” (Janus Films).