Defence Counsel Sedov

Just when you thought glasnost had allowed Soviet film-makers to say all there was to say about the horrors of the Stalin years, along comes this astonishing short feature (based on fact) to peel away more layers of the onion. Harassed, middle-aged Sedov is the only lawyer in Moscow willing to take on the defence of four farmers accused of sabotaging their commune and tortured into making false confessions. His dogged persistence against the state's legal and political bureaucracy gets the men off, but results in his own canonisation as a Stalinist zealot - and in the execution of dozens of other men. A genuinely shocking parable of the biter bit, it incorporates some staggering newsreel footage from the '30s, never seen before.