‘State of Cinema 2024 - Sergei Loznitsa’

A speech and talk, followed by a filmscreening ​​​​​​​

For seven years now, Bozar and the online film magazine Sabzian – which celebrates its tenth anniversary in 2024! – have asked notable personalities to write a State of Cinema article, a text that holds cinema up to the light, an invitation to reflect on what cinema means, could mean, or should mean today. This year, it is the turn of Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa to present a text in the Henry Le Boeuf Hall. The audience will then have the honor of engaging in a discussion with this distinguished filmmaker. The conversation will be followed by a screening of a film* carefully selected by Sergei Loznitsa.

This State of Cinema event is part of a Close-up dedicated to Sergei Loznitsa (b. 1964). You'll have ample opportunity to delve into the work of this filmmaker , who grew up in Kyiv and studied at the famous film school VGIK in Moscow. In recent decades he has made more than twenty documentaries and feature films. In his documentary work, which is rooted in the rich tradition of avant-garde documentary that is so central to the history of Soviet cinema, he captures, without commentary and with a keen eye and careful editing, a Russia in transition. In 2010, Loznitsa directed his first feature film, My Joy, premiered in the official Cannes competition. In the following years, In the Fog (2012), A Gentle Creature (2017), and Donbass (2018) would follow, all three presented at Cannes. Loznitsa’s oeuvre is both poetic and political, disturbing and meditative, in direct contact with the vicissitudes of history, both large and small.

* More information about the chosen film and the program will follow.