Blockade

The Siege of Leningrad is one of the emphatic turning points of the 20th century. The city withstood the German forces from September 1941 to January 1944, enduring unimaginable hardship and a ferocious loss of life. By the time the siege was lifted, the power of the Nazi military machine had effectively been broken. Loznitsa is not concerned with the military action, but rather the way ordinary people survived, and died, within the besieged city. He has compiled this documentary from newsreel footage but refrained from adding any voiceover commentary or music. Instead, there is only a sparse soundtrack of muted sounds. The silence allows the immediacy of the images to come to the fore and eloquently confronts us with the depths of human suffering and endurance. We can only stand mute before eventshop of such magnitude, and contemplate the way that tragedy on this scale is both mundane and heartrending. Stark and unmissable in its unblinking reminder of the simple horror of war.

By providing the originally silent images with a meticulously reconstructed and almost perfect soundtrack, the scenes from everyday life under siege seem to be set in the present. By not intervening in the montage but giving the scenes room to tell a story, the scenes transcend the specific historic eventshop and lead a new life. They do not evoke memories of the past, but become a breathtaking reanimation of reality.

Rotterdam International Film Festival