The Trial: Prague 1952 + Q&A with director Ruth Zylberman and Ivan Margolius

About

In Prague in 2018, workers find in an abandoned warehouse film reels that had been hidden there since the fall of the Berlin Wall. These are the images of the Slánský Trial, which in 1952 was a summit of Stalinist terror and anti-Semitism: a macabre production in which 14 top leaders of the Communist regime, most of them Jews, were accused of imaginary crimes and forced, through torture and threats, to make a public confession of their guilt, which was also imaginary. 11 of them were sentenced to death and hanged.

With the help of these recently restored exceptional archives and a dive into the archives of the secret police, Ruth Zylberman went to meet these broken families in order to retrace the complex trajectory of three of these men, Rudolf Slánský, Artur London and Rudolf Margolius. Three communists, three men destroyed by a world they had helped to build and where the lie that became the law managed to subvert, beyond the political field, the most elementary bonds of human society right down to its most intimate entrenchments. 

Ruth Zylberman is a filmmaker and author. Amongst her latest films are Le dernier été (France Télévisions, Zadig Productions, 2019, 60’), Les Enfants du 209 rue Saint-Maur, Paris Xe (2017, Arte-Zadig Productions, 110’), Maurice Nadeau. Le chemin de la vie (2011, Arte-Zadig Productions, 52’), Dissidents, les Artisans de la Liberté (2009, Arte-Zadig Productions, 100’). She is also the author of La direction de l’Absent, (Christian Bourgois, 2015) and the narrative 209 rue Saint-Maur, Paris Xe, Autobiography d’un immeuble (Le Seuil/Arte Editions, 2020). 

Ivan Margolius, son of Rudolf Margolius who was sentenced to death during the political trials in 1952, is an author whose work includes memoirs and a number of books and articles on art, architecture, engineering, design and automobile history. He was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia and studied architecture both there and in London following his arrival in the UK in 1966. He has worked for Foster and Partners, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill and Yorke Rosenberg Mardall.