Procès d'un jeune poète - Philippe van Cutsem

In 1964, the young poet Joseph Brodsky, then just twenty‑four years old, was brought before a Soviet court and charged with “social parasitism.” Following his trial, he was sentenced to five years of forced labour and internal exile in the Russian North. The trial, secretly transcribed by Frida Vigdorova and nowadays considered one of the very first human‑rights documents, would later circulate in samizdat and prompt rare protests among the Soviet intelligentsia — protests unprecedented in the post‑Stalin era — becoming a striking example of the pressures faced by artists under Soviet rule. The film revisits this decisive episode, which helped shape Brodsky’s trajectory and sharpened international awareness of cultural repression in the USSR.

​​​​​​​Philippe Van Cutsem first worked in painting and drawing before extending his practice to a wide range of visual forms, with cinema gradually taking a central place. After studying at the École de Recherche Graphique in Brussels, he collaborated with Thibaut Halbardier on a series of videos and installations exploring the conditions of artistic creation and its reception.