‘Imperium’ review: Sergei Loznitsa surveys the 1970s Soviet empire in revealing archive epic

Dir. Sergei Loznitsa. Germany/Italy/France/Lithuania 2026. 175 mins. 

In his latest documentary Imperium, tireless Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa allows himself an expansive canvas to portray the vastness of the Soviet Union. As in other Loznitsa archive features, including 2019’s State Funeral and 2024’s The Invasion, there is no overt commentary; arguments and themes emerge instead from the material and its editing. Premiering out of competition in Venice before playing London, this is a hefty but fascinating watch; onward travel may benefit from renewed interest in Loznitsa as a fiction director, following last year’s much acclaimed Two Prosecutors. 

Loznitsa turns archive footage into a tangibly present parallel world

Imperium comprises archive material shot by a group of Italian filmmakers between 1970 and 1973, in locations across the USSR, the footage having been preserved by Rome’s Audiovisual Archive of the Labour and Democratic Movement (AAMOD). Loznitsa assembles the material into a comprehensive flyover of the USSR. The starting point is Moscow in 1971, at a characteristically bombastic parade. ’The 1973 targets achieved ahead of schedule!’ screams a banner. But, while Soviet propaganda is seen and heard intermittently throughout Imperium, it emerges that even, under the vast spread of the Soviet system, in many places life goes on much as it had before the Revolution.

The gateway to this panorama is a glimpse of a photo exhibition in Moscow, with Muscovite crowds gazing at pictures of Soviet citizens – some in traditional costumes – illustrating the diversity of the USSR’s peoples, in the ‘Family of Man’ popular-ethnography tradition. But we soon see the distance between such idealised folkloric images and the lived context that the documentary footage restores to these various cultures. 

Imperium is arranged as a progression through the seasons, from winter to winter. Throughout, there are images of labour in the hallowed Soviet tradition, at a car factory or in various sewing workshops. In some locations, working conditions look highly organised and not disagreeable whereas in Ufa, in what was the Bashkir Republic, we see sites of industrial desolation with more than a touch of Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979).

In many places filmed, active worship under various faiths flourishes despite official Soviet policy. Local languages, rather than Russian, also appear to predominate in everyday life, including Arabic and, significantly for today, Ukrainian. Signs of Soviet ideology are visible. At an agricultural festival in Dagestan, for example, banners blare Marxist ideals in red advertising; but here, and elsewhere, they are merely a backdrop to ceremonies more ancient and organic. Imperium treats us to bird imitations and throat singing in Ufa; in Suzdal, a traditional winter fair with dancing ‘Petrushka’ clown figures; in Georgia, a traditional outdoor wedding, with choral singing and dazzling dance steps. Very few of these activities seem to take place under any sort of official aegis. 

There are signs of cultural yearning for the West: notably in a couple of small-scale fashion shows (one commentator noting the appeal of the ‘Italian-style cut’), while in Tallinn, dancers perform modern ballet, with definite overtones of Hair, to an Estonian version of soft-pop hit ‘Stumblin’ In’.  

This match of a 1978 song to somewhat earlier footage is a clue that, as ever in Loznitsa’s archive films, some sonic manipulation is at work. The director’s regular collaborator Vladimir Golovnitski has both supplied sound design where no original recording was available, and enhanced the immediate sense of sonic presence – as in a closing sequence of crowds trudging resonantly through Leningrad snow. Thanks to this and the crisp image restoration, by Jonas Zagorskas and Pēteris Sudakovs, we feel not so much that we’re looking into a distant past, as that we’re visiting a very tangibly present parallel world.

One implicit touch of commentary is threaded throughout: sections of red screen between sequences, accompanied by a tolling bell, portending the end of the Soviet Union within 20 years of when these images were made. Yet the individual territories and cultures endure – even if many have been engaged in bitter conflict, or are still subject to Moscow’s efforts to bring them back under control at any cost.