'The Kiev Trial' Review: Sergei Loznita's Compelling Act Of Historical Recovery Feels Unfinished [Venice]

One of the first post-WWII trials to hold Germans to account, the January 1946 Kiev trial took place in the USSR and has since become known as the Kiev Nuremberg. Overlapping in both time and scope with that infamous trial, the tribunal took place over the course of two days where 15 Germans stood trial for war crimes, ultimately being convicted and hanged for atrocities committed. 

Utilizing three hours of courtroom footage that he found in an archive while constructing his 2021 documentary “Babi Yar. Context,” Sergei Loznita’sThe Kiev Trial” aims to reconstruct the trial. Made up entirely of archival footage — with occasional onscreen text for minimal context — “The Kiev Trial” meticulously documents the procedures and testimony from both the defendants and witnesses. A profound act of historical recovery, “The Kiev Trial” lays bare the horrors enacted by the Nazi party, first by showing the defendants evasive explanations for the murders they committed, before turning towards the powerful first-hand accounts of witnesses who only barely managed to avoid death, whether that be through mass executions or, as one woman speaks to, concentration camps including Auschwitz. 

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However, unlike “Babi Yar. Context,” which, as its title implies, sought to bring historical and contemporary context to that 1941 massacre, “The Kiev Trial” is often disorienting as testimony piles up and stories bleed into each other. Those looking for an overview, or even a tiny bit of historical background, of the trial will be forced to look elsewhere — we begin with opening statements and immediately jump into defendants’ pleas before moving rapidly from testimony to testimony.

But those testimonies are stark, emotional, and ultimately very hard to watch. One woman, Dina Pronicheva, recounts, towards the end of the proceedings, how she managed to play dead during the Babi Yar massacre, holding her breath as the Nazis stepped on her with shoes studded with nails before they started to bury her alive. Another, Alexandra Tsarenkova, discusses a mass shooting at a teachers’ college in Novomoskovsk. The final scenes are of a mass hanging of the convicted criminals in Kalinin Square, as those in Kiev wistfully cheer on. 

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While Loznita has crafted a compelling document of historical significance, the act of watching the film is a bit scattered. The choice to use only archival footage is commendable and creates an immediacy to the experience, but the lack of any historical context — save for names and dates of the witnesses — creates a hermetic viewing experiencing, siloing the proceedings away from any sense of a timeline of how and when these events took place. 

Does “The Kiev Trial” work as a stand-alone film? I’m unsure. It helps to illuminate” Babi Yar. Context,” especially with Pronicheva’s testimony, and serves as an addendum for the type of archival work that Loznita has been interested in recovering recently (including his fascinating and similarly constructed 2019 Stalin documentary “State Funeral”), but seems to be missing key contextual components that might be needed for a film so focused on a neglected historical moment — one that was quickly overshadowed by Nuremberg. 

As an act of both witnessing and recuperation, “The Kiev Trial” is a compelling, though challenging, watch — horrifying in its recollections of atrocities and the blunt ways that the Nazi defendants explained and defended their actions. As a film, however, “The Kiev Trial” feels oddly unfinished, as if this edited collection of excerpts is the first step towards a more complete package. One that will hopefully shed more light on the scope and impact of the trial in the future. [B-]