Sergei Loznitsa’s found footage documentary is comprised of painstakingly researched and restored archival material from one of Joseph Stalin's first show trials, recorded in Moscow in 1930. The trial and its consequences are real, but the crime is fake – a spectacle concocted as a display of the government’s power over the population. The accused – charged with forming a secret pact to restore capitalism and fracture the USSR – are forced to confess to crimes they never committed. Illuminating the perils of authoritarianism while undermining the inherent theatricality of its propagandistic machinery, The Trial is a fascinating historical document with considerable contemporary resonance.