In his latest documentary, consisting entirely of archive footage, Sergei Loznitsa explores the concept of justice as a spectacle through one of the earliest Stalinist trials of the 1930's, brought against a group of economists charged with plotting a coup d'état to overthrow the Soviet government. The farcical quality of this historical event (re)presented by Loznitsa is obvious both to present-day viewers, who are aware that what they are witnessing is a work of fiction staged by Stalin and his prosecutors, to the theatre audiences at the time, but also to the accused, to the prosecutors and the judges taking part in the trial, actors who understood the role they had been forced into and who followed to the bitter end the script they had all willingly agreed on. (Raluca Durbacă)