In the Soviet Union of 1937, during the height of Stalin’s Great Purge, Alexander Kornev, a young public prosecutor, receives a letter from a political prisoner being persecuted by the NKVD (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs), the Soviet secret police. Convinced of the corruption of its agents and determined to confront them before the man disappears into the regime’s prison system, Kornev decides to investigate.

However, faced with a brutal campaign of political repression and violence carried out by state authorities, he finds himself trapped in an endless maze of bureaucracy. His journey to Moscow soon becomes a desperate struggle against the machinery of totalitarianism.

Selected for competition at the Cannes Film Festival, this powerful drama explores one of the darkest periods in the history of the USSR. The film is directed by the acclaimed Belarusian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa (In the Fog, Maidan, Donbass and State Funeral) and is based on the novel of the same name by Georgy Demidov (1908–1987).