Both as film and as history, "State Funeral" stands as a canonical work.

| May 29, 2021

In the loony seriousness of it all, "State Funeral" isn't spectator sport - it makes us active observers of a scary machinery, something to file away.

| May 29, 2021

A found-footage documentary that captures life in thrilling, painstaking detail in the hours and days after Stalin's death.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 21, 2021

The faces are the most intriguing thing. Loznitsa gives us a montage of inscrutability and repressed anxiety.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 19, 2021

A film like State Funeral is a warning. History has lessons for us about what does, and does not, work, in politics, in leadership, in culture itself. We would do well to listen. We would do well to watch.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 7, 2021

A haunting amalgam of official pomp and everyday experience, the double image of a totalitarian government and the people in whose name it ruled.

| May 6, 2021

With a running time of 135 minutes, it eventually becomes exhausting-but that is partly the point of a film about a population going through the motions, of a mass event with a hole where the middle should be.

| Original Score: B- | May 5, 2021

The cumulative effect is to encourage distrust of state-sponsored imagery in any form, and to suggest that, under the spell of the right official narrative, we too might be moved to authentic tears.

| Jul 17, 2020

As presented, State Funeral conjures a vision of gaslighting on an unimaginable scale-impossible to consign to history's dustbin.

| May 1, 2020

Through an inconspicuous editing strategy that makes irony emerge little by little, State Funeral exposes the pathetic absurdity of collective adoration.

| Apr 25, 2020

This cannily edited selection of rare archive footage reveals the peak of the people's mind-born terror, and it is the beginning of the end.

| Sep 12, 2019

Rarely, if ever, have we seen state-sponsored pomp and ceremony on such a breath-taking scale.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 8, 2019

Loznitsa's film is a characteristically imposing piece with niche appeal, but will make a powerful impact at outlets that sit at the nexus of cinema, art and political discussion.

| Sep 6, 2019