Dear friends,

On the occasion of the 120th anniversary of the birth of Musa Jalil and Victory Day in the Great Patriotic War, the film club of the Russian House in Brussels presents:

“Black Forest”

Director: Radik Kudoyarov

Starring: Zulfat Zakirov

2024 * 150 minutes

French subtitles

18+

The film is based on real events. Standartenführer Fleischmann faces an important task. To accomplish it, he needs a poet who is being held in a death cell in a Berlin prison. As the story unfolds, an unexpected connection emerges between the “house of death” in Berlin and postwar Nuremberg. The audience is presented with a unique report from beneath the scaffold in Nuremberg. For the first time in cinema, the execution of the main war criminals is recreated.

Musa Jalil (1906–1944) was an outstanding Tatar poet and journalist, Hero of the Soviet Union. He was born in the Orenburg province and showed an interest in literature from a young age. Jalil actively participated in cultural and public life, wrote poetry, worked as an editor, and became one of the prominent representatives of 20th-century Tatar poetry.

During the Great Patriotic War, Musa Jalil went to the front as a war correspondent. In 1942, he was wounded and captured. While imprisoned in Nazi camps, he became one of the organizers of an underground anti-fascist group, continuing his struggle even in captivity.

In prison, Jalil created a cycle of poems known as the “Moabit Notebook.” In 1944, he was executed in Berlin. After the war, his feat and творчество received wide recognition, and his name became a symbol of courage, patriotism, and the power of the word.