Спи, богатырь, спиАнтон Долин, 2019-09-06, www.meduza.io

Название «Государственные похороны» — нарочито нейтральное, будто стертое. Даже английская версия выглядит богаче: «State Funeral» можно перевести как «Похороны государства», и сразу откроется богатство трактовок. Но Сергей Лозница не облегчает жизнь своим зрителям.

Venezia 76 - State Funeralda Anton Giulio Onofri, 2019-09-05, www.close-up.it

La sera del 5 marzo 1953, per un’emorragia cerebrale che tre giorni prima gli aveva paralizzato mezzo corpo, muore inaspettatamente Iosif Vissarionovic Stalin. L’avvenimento produce uno shock fortissimo in tutta l’Unione Sovietica, come la morte improvvisa di un padre. E Stalin era davvero un grande padre, in quel preciso momento storico, amato, quasi venerato e ancora considerato, anche fuori della Russia, colui che aveva sconfitto Hitler influendo in maniera decisiva sull’esito della Seconda Guerra Mondiale.

Musik und Bild in Sergej Loznitsas Dokumentarfilm Segodnja my postroim dom (Heute bauen wir ein Haus, Rußland 1996)Hans J. Wulff:, 2019-07-03,

Es war einmal, da kamen Marat Magambetwo aus Kasachstan und Sergej Loznitsaa aus der Ukraine nach Moskau und begannen, an der russischen Filmhochschule VGIK zu studieren (v.a. bei der georgischen Regisseurin Nana Dschordschadse). Irgendwann blickten sie aus dem Fenster der Wohnung von Magambetow und sahen eine Baustelle. Passend zur Situation ihres eigenen Lebens beschlossen sie, einen Film zu drehen, nannten ihn Heute bauen wir ein Haus und fanden einen ganz eigenen Stil und Tonfall, der auf vielen Festivals begeisterte und – neben mehreren anderen Auszeichnungen – die „Goldene Taube“ auf dem Dokumentarfilmfestival in Leipzig und den „Bronzenen Drachen“ auf dem Filmfestival in Krakau (1997) erlangte.

Where Does Homeland Begin? Close-Up on Sergei Loznitsaʼs "Victory Day"on Notebook MUBI, 2019-02-14, www.mubi.com

May 9, 2017. Belarus-born, Ukraine-raised, and now Berlin-based filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa brings his camera to Treptower Park, in former East Berlin, to document the 61st celebration of Victory Day. What results is rich and knotty work of documentary cinema by one of the great chroniclers (and occasional critics) of 20th century Russian history.

«Донбасс»: банальность зла и зло банальностиГеоргий Касьянов, 2019-02-06, www.kyivdaily.com.ua

Известные мне немногочисленные рецензии и отзывы людей, профессионально разбирающихся в искусстве кино, достаточно четко разделились на две группы. Одни – в восторге от «настоящего кино». Другие – в ужасе от «ненастоящего кино».

An Extraordinary New Film Captures the Spectacle of Soviet Show Trialsby Massha Gesssen, 2019-01-15, www.newyorker.com

A palpable sense of randomness is Loznitsa’s singular accomplishment. As in the trial itself, there is no story in “The Trial”—only the spectacle of the transformation of people into totalitarian subjects.

First Look 2019: Donbass and The Trial by Daniel Witkin, 2019-01-11, www.reverseshot.org

The lifeless choreography makes for the starkest contrast with the darkly anarchic Donbass. While cameras and their operators occupy a privileged position in Putin’s info-war, here we can imagine the figure behind the camera being as frightened as all the rest, anxiously determined not to fuck up or else.

First Look 2019: Donbass and The Trialby Daniel Witkin , 2019-01-11, www.reverseshot.org

Donbass is the film in which Loznitsaʼs work as both fiction and documentary filmmaker come into closest harmony. Comprised of largely disconnected, almost sketch-like fragments (the director has cited Buñuelʼs Phantom of Liberty as an influence), the film has a pronounced ripped- from-the-headlines quality, even as it casts doubt on the veracity of the headlines themselves.

Trial Runsby Tony Pipolo, 2019-01-09, www.artforum.com

To hear them refuse to defend themselves, confessing error, and begging for mercy is to witness the full, terrifying, and repugnant effect of Stalinist ideology. In the tradition of propagandistic cinema, the dour proceedings indoors are sporadically interrupted by footage of hysterical mobs marching in the streets and demanding death for the “imperialist betrayers” of the glorious working class on “trial” inside.

Global Discoveries on DVD: Some Blessings and Curses of Cinephiliaby Jonathan Rosenbaum, 2019-01-02, www.cinema-scope.com

Part of the trick of Loznitsa’s nightmarish, black-comic assembly of bureaucratic and brute horrors in contemporary Russia is to keep us guessing how much it’s a realistic depiction . . . and how much of it is grotesque exaggeration and satire, until these ambiguities eventually give way to the heroine’s own literal nightmare as a summation.

"Reality" as Embattled Story: Donbass in Odesa and Their Own Republic at Doclisboaby Carmen Gray, 2018-12-20, www.sensesofcinema.com

In perhaps the most harrowing scene of all, unbearable in its gradual mood shift and escalation, a man is tied to a pole with a sign announcing him to passersby as a pro-Ukrainian mercenary killer. Its intricate weave of interaction is a lesson not only in how mobs function, but how traumatic experiences and attitudes passed down through generations move virally and boil up again with little need of prodding.

The Trialby Lawrence Garcia, 2018-09-06, www.cinema-scope.com

What the industrious Belarus-born director has created is a profoundly (and productively) contradictory object that resists easy topicality: a fastidiously researched, nonfiction account of a fastidiously composed fiction, and hence a canny inversion of the courtroom drama template.

Toronto: Wavelengths Preview — "We Do Not Care if We Go Down in History as Contrarians"by Michael Sicinski, 2018-09-05, www.mubi.com

While Loznitsa is to be commended for his dedication to the process and absolute fidelity to the record, the film is a bit back-loaded, since it is only through the final revelations of the trial that much of what we have been listening to comes to be understood.

Donbass - Contemporary World CinemaBy Richard Porton, 2018-08-31, www.cinema-scope.com

Donbass’ near-Buñuelian episodic structure (in interviews, Loznitza cites The Phantom of Liberty as an influence) acquires a cumulative power.

Festivals: Drifting Apartby Kent Jones, 2018-07-03, www.filmcomment.com

Unlike last year’s A Gentle Creature, whose pursuit of the random and the lethargic resulted in a film that felt almost unattended, Donbass is piercing and impressively relentless, and its best scenes possess a believably banal and terrifying momentum.

Cold Wars: The 2018 Cannes Film Festivalby Daniel Fairfax, 2018-06-27, www.sensesofcinema.com

Loznitsa’s procedure becomes heavy-handed and contemptuous. . . . This tendentiousness becomes flagrant in the film’s implausible final scene, which pushes the contrast between his understated form and the dubious nature of his content to unhinged extremes. You don’t have to be a Putin booster to feel that, with Donbass, a great filmmaker has discredited himself.

Russian Cinema Under the Gaze of Putin: Truth in the Face of Despairby Vadim Rizov, 2018-06-20, www.frieze.com

Shot in the ultra-wide 2.66:1 ratio (last seen in, of all things, Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, 2015), A Gentle Creature demonstrates Loznitsa’s impeccably rigorous knack for diorama staging and impeccable choreography, keeping his aesthetic verve in the face of atrocity.

Donbass Cannes 2018 Reviewby Giovanni Marchini Camia, 2018-05-19, www.thefilmstage.com

In strict terms of craft, Donbass is an impressive achievement, but its heavy-handedness nevertheless feels inordinate. Since Loznitsa doesn’t provide almost any historical and political context, it’s unlikely that anyone without prior knowledge of the war in Donbass will come out with much actual insight into what’s going on there.