Minizoom Sergei Loznitsa: A Gentle Creature

directed by Sergei Loznitsa, FR, DE, RU, 2017, 137 min., Russian language with CZ subtitles

In relation to the aggression of Russia on Ukraine we focus our attention on the Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa, who in his films continuously examines the socio-political relations in Russian, dynamics of power and evil and the force of propaganda.

A Gentle Creature by Sergei Loznitsa is an uncompromising allegory of the state of Russian soul and the current prison system as a legacy of Stalin’s social engineering, part of the state machinery and an instrument of power. 

One day, a package a woman had sent to her husband in prison was returned to her. Frightened and full of worries she sets out on a journey to a remote part of the country. Bureaucratic absurdity, guilt, violence and the knowledge that prison doesn’t end behind the walls of the barbed wire await her. The director’s description mixes brutal realism and expressionistic satire in an unusual way. A Gentle Creature is a radically political film about a country where both authorities and people play the role of phantoms – they serve as empty boxes that imitate the position they should hold.