A Mosfilm sound stage has been transformed into the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, where 76 years ago the leaders of the Third Reich faced judgment. Yet director Nikolai Lebedev (Legend No. 17, Flight Crew) is not attempting to reproduce the tribunal in documentary detail. Instead, against this historic backdrop unfolds a fictional adventure. Nuremberg is already being tipped as one of the most anticipated films of 2022.
Lebedev, known for his high-grossing dramas, is now tackling the defining trial of the 20th century. The film is conceived as a large-scale international co-production with actors drawn from across Europe and the United States. Leading the cast are Evgeny Mironov, Sergey Bezrukov and Igor Petrenko. Sets, costumes, and a star-studded ensemble all suggest a production of unusual ambition.
— “Your Honours, I appear before you as the representative of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which bore the brunt of the fascist onslaught.”
Inside Pavilion No. 9, Courtroom 600 becomes the stage for an unforgiving contest of truth and falsehood, law and morality. The story follows Soviet diplomats and intelligence officers locked in a battle against those determined to obstruct the tribunal and prevent the world from seeing justice delivered.
“It was the Soviet side that insisted everything should proceed according to law, that humanity should witness the process, and that even the defendants must be given counsel,” Mironov explains. “My character says we hold this trial not only for the sake of the victims but for our children — so they would never again have to prove that it was they who attacked us, and not the other way round. The Nazis tried to spread the lie that they had merely struck preemptively.”
Lebedev makes clear that his aim is not to recreate every detail of the trial but to craft a spy thriller about people trying to start new lives in the shadow of war.
“Our task is not to repeat the tribunal. Our task is to look at it from our own perspective, today’s perspective. To see it through the eyes of our characters. Their dramas are inseparable from what is unfolding in the courtroom.”
The struggle for truth, for love, for survival plays out in Nuremberg. Filming is scheduled in Russia, Germany, Belgium and the Czech Republic. Several key sequences have already been shot, but cast and crew alike admit that immersing themselves in the atmosphere of the Nuremberg Trials has been emotionally exacting.
“The gravity of it overwhelms you — you feel transported to that time, confronted with the enormity of it all. You try to hold yourself together, but you can’t: your voice trembles, the tears come,” confesses Bezrukov.
At the same time, the project has given its creators a chance to raise contemporary questions — about freedom, duty and moral compromise.
“It is timely,” says Mironov, “because today people forget who was the victim and who the perpetrators. Time passes, and suddenly the tribunal itself, and its conclusions, are being doubted. I find that profoundly disturbing.”
State secrets and intellectual intrigue, passion and romance, espionage and personal drama — all converge in this film. With its scale, cast and subject, Nuremberg already looks set to be one of the cinematic events of the coming year.
Yulia Kiseleva