State Funeral (PG)
Directed by Sergei Loznitsa
★★★

MOSTLY based on previously unseen archive footage, writer-director Sergei Loznitsa’s new montage film depicts the shock and awe, followed by mass hysteria, after the death of Joseph Stalin in March 1953.

The documentary follows the four days from the announcement of his demise, in excruciating detail over the radio, to his funeral in Red Square. It places you in the midst of the events as hundreds of thousands of people arrived from all corners of the USSR (and from abroad) to pay their respects to their former leader, whose rule resulted in the deaths of millions of Soviet citizens.