THE KIEV TRIAL

Director: Sergei Loznitsa

Country: Ukraina, Alankomaat

Year: 2022

Duration: 106 min

Languages: venäjä, saksa, ukraina / tekstitetty englanniksi

Category: , , ,

Babi Yar. Context (2021) depicted the circumstances leading up to the massacre of more than 33 000 Ukrainian Jews. Partly the same but mostly still unseen archive material now gives us front row seats at the ”Kiev Nuremberg,” a war crimes trial held in January 1946.

We are in the bombed-out capital of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, examining what happened during the German occupation. The Moscow Central Studio of Documentary Film filmed and archived the show trial -type event, and Loznitsa trusts in the power of the images and sound. The true gruesomeness of the events is gradually revealed by the behaviour of the defendants, witnesses and interpreters; the tones of their voices, muffled stammers, extended pauses, strained positions, helpless looks, and the electrified reactions of the onlookers.

At times, one wonders what substances these people were ingesting to keep playing their parts. The witnesses appear in all their candour, forged fearless by their ordeal. The Germans explain how they carried out the decimation of the Ukrainians to make space for their own people. One stresses how he was forced to carry out his duties, and had he not done so, someone else might have with even more deadly consequences. Another one condemns the Nazi regime. All Germans are hanged in the square. After all, no one wants the horror and destruction of war to happen again.

Mia Öhman