The world famous Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Logenits has tried to show the images of today’s Russia in his new film ‘To Processors’ through political events in Russia 88 years ago. Then Stalin was Putin today. However, his previous films shown at the Cannes Film Festival, A Gentle Creature (2017) and Donbas (2018) were also on the same subject.
The film is a political thriller who takes us to the dreadful era of the Stalin era in Russia of 1937-38 when about one million innocent citizens were tortured by torture on suspicion of false allegations and being a traitor to the great Soviet revolution. Before the establishment of the Soviet Union’s intelligence agency KGB i.e. KMTET Gosudarstavenvay Bezopasanosti (13 March 1954 to 3 December 1991), there was an agency called NKVD (10 July 1934 to 15 March 1946) which killed a million innocent people.
After the end of KGB, now the government intelligence agency which has been working in Russia since April 3, 1995 and does all the acts that KGB once used to do, is called FSB (Federal Security Service). Lozenits says that the film is based on a novel by a famous scientist and political prisoner Jarji Demidov of Russia who has spent nearly fourteen years in prison and has suffered terrible torture. He has written a rosemary of terrible harassment of political prisoners in Russia’s jails.
This novel was written in 1969 when no one dared to raise any voice against the dictatorship of Russian rule. The manuscript of this novel was then confiscated by the Russian intelligence agency’s GB. After the death of the author, the manuscript was returned in 1980 at the request of the writer’s daughter. But this manuscript could not be printed till 2009. Logenits says that this story had to wait 40 years to come forward to the world.
Ever since Russia attacked Ukraine, the Cannes Film Festival is supporting Unilateral Ukraine and hence Russian films and filmmakers are almost banned here. Two years ago, the message of Ukraine President Vladimir Jailonsky was pronounced at the opening ceremony of the Cannes Film Festival. This time, not only this film by Serjai Logenits is shown in the main competition segment but on the day of inauguration, three Ukraine films were performed in which a film is based on the life of President Vladimir Jailonsky.
‘To Processors’ is the story of a young prosecutor named Alexander Corniev in a small town in a remote Russian, which has been newly appointed. He suddenly reaches a letter of blood on a piece of card board, in which justice is requested. A person writing a letter is a stapenic Bolshevik Party worker who loves his country dishonestly. Despite the local intelligence police NKVD, he does not sign the false affidavit of the betrayal, despite the harassment.
The jailer has imposed the duty of a prisoner to quietly burn all the letters written by those prisoners to Comrade Stalin. Thousands of such letters are burnt in which the prisoners have requested Stalin for justice that their case should be heard again. From here, a trip to young prosecutor Alexander Corniev begins in which we see a big crime of history which has no hearing anywhere. Couriev meets Stapanic in jail in a legal manner about a letter written with that blood.
There, he gets to know countless heartfelt stories of harassment of political prisoners in an illegal manner and implicating in false cases. Stapnic takes off his clothes and shows him a mark of harassment and violence. Prosecutor Alexander Corneave is under the illusion that perhaps the high officials sitting in Moscow do not know this injustice. He travels to Moscow to provide them justice and succeeds in meeting Russia’s biggest officer, Chief Procurer Vishinsky. As soon as he tells Vishninski all the things about the atrocities of the Intelligence Police NKVD, he himself comes under the investigation.
Vishinsky avoids the pretext of collecting medical evidence of these atrocities and sends him back. Interest in the trains, the intelligence police officials surround him and when his city comes to the city, they deception and abduct him on the pretext of giving him a lift in the car. They show him a warrant issued against him from Moscow office and take him to the same terrible jail from where the story of the film started. In the final scene we see that a vehicle is going inside the jail and the huge gate of the jail is closing.
Like her previous films, Sergei Logenits has kept everything realistic in the film and Oleg Mutu’s cinematography is very good. The film is shot in Riga, the capital of Lativia. Many scenes are very impressive. All the artists have performed brilliantly, especially in the role of young prosecutors, Alexander Kuznetsova and Alexander Philipken’s powerhouse acting in the role of prisoner.
In the train journey, a former soldier, who is telling the stories of World War I in the songs, attracts everyone’s attention with his acting. Views inside and outside the prison are very impressive. Logenits have focused in the minimum scenes in stylized style. Overall, this story, which has been forgotten by the Stalin era in Russia, comes to the rule of Vladimir Putin in today’s Russia.
