STATE FUNERAL

Out of competition, Venice 2019

Directed by: Sergei Loznitsa
Country: Netherlands, Lithuania
Year: 2019
Length: 135 minutes
Genre: documentary

Unique, mostly unseen before, archive footage from March 1953, presents the funeral of Joseph Stalin as the culmination of the dictator’s personality cult. The news of Stalin’s death on March 5, 1953, shocked the entire Soviet Union. The burial ceremony was attended by tens of thousands of mourners. We observe every stage of the funeral spectacle, described by Pravda newspaper, as the Great Farewell, and receive an unprecedented access to the dramatic and absurd experience of life and death under Stalin’s reign.