“Freedom is something you have to fight for”
Sergei Loznitsa on the relevance of the show trials today
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
In his new film The Trial, filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa processes original recordings of the Moscow Show Trial against the “Industrial Party”. In 1930, a group of economists and engineers appeared before a court, charged with industrial sabotage. It was claimed that they had secretly planned a coup against the Soviet government with the support of the French prime minister Raymond Poincaré. In an interview with Jeva Griskjane and Anthony Baxter, Loznitsa draws parallels with the trials being held in today’s Russia. For Loznitsa, the cases of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Kyrill Serebrennikov, Oleg Sentsov and Arkady Babchenko are evidence that freedom is a precarious state.
(Osteuropa 8-9/2018, pp. 71–74)