The Trial is comprised of painstakingly researched and restored black-and-white footage chronicling one of Joseph Stalin's first show trials, which took place in 1930 in Moscow. The suspenseful, life-threatening situation is real, while the crime of course is fake, a spectacle concocted by Stalin's government to serve his reign. Various forms of totalitarian fabrication and operatic artifice lie at the heart of what becomes a chilling courtroom drama. The accused — a group of top-ranking economists and engineers, charged with forming a secret pact with French Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré and other Western leaders in order to restore capitalism and fracture the USSR — are forced to confess to crimes they never committed.
won prizes
CA - Toronto International Film Festival selection
