Aleksandr Kuznetsov on making a film about Russia: ‘Some of our friends right now in Russia are in political prisons’
Russian-Ukrainian actor Aleksandr Kuznetsov is the star of Two Prosecutors a prescient work about the era of Stalin. He told James Mottram about the state of contemporary Russia, the dangers of fascism, and the Ukraine-Russia conflict
When Russian-Ukrainian actor Aleksandr Kuznetsov received the script for his new film, the Stalin-era drama Two Prosecutors, it felt eerily familiar. ‘For us, it’s such normal stuff,’ he sighs. ‘Some of our friends right now in Russia are in political prisons, being starved. You can’t even write letters to them because 80% are destroyed and never go to the actual person.’
Set in 1937, amid Stalin’s Great Purge, Kuznetsov plays Kornyev, a morally upstanding state prosecutor who takes up the case of a political prisoner, an Old Bolshevik and victim of Russia’s secret police, the NKVD. ‘He thinks: “I just studied for ten years in law school. I just graduated. This is my first mission. I will be fighting for it. I will not allow myself to believe that the system is corrupted.”’ Written and directed by Ukrainian Sergei Loznitsa, it was a challenging shoot for Kuznetsov who had to adjust to his director’s way of working. ‘Sergei doesn’t talk too much with the actors. He will talk to you about fascism, Mussolini, Stalin’s process...’ But any character discussions? ‘He would get super uncomfortable.’ Loznitsa, it seems, prefers the actor to do the interpreting. ‘When we started to actually rehearse, I understood that there’s such a huge level of trust in me; he just sees me as Kornyev.’
Kuznetsov offers a sublimely controlled performance, but it surely won’t get seen in his native Russia. The actor left Moscow after speaking out against Putin and now lives in Europe. The release of Two Prosecutors allows us to reflect on the terror of totalitarian governments and the four-year long Ukraine-Russia conflict. ‘I was so confident that it would end in three months because it’s so absurd,’ says Kuznetsov. ‘This war has no grounds at all. But then not everything happens the way you imagine.’
Two Prosecutors in in cinemas from Friday 27 March.