Justice for Sergei

Poignant portrait of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who paid the ultimate price for denouncing corruption in Russia. In November 2009, pending his trial, he died under dubious circumstances in a Moscow detention centre. While his death spurred international outcry, the Russian authorities remained silent.

The Wall Street Journal describes Magnitsky’s death as a ‘slow-motion assassination’, and the Moscow Public Oversight Committee calls it ‘a murder to conceal a fraud’. Under public pressure, president Dmitry Medvedev orders an investigation, but more than a year later no one has been held to account for the assassination.

In Justice for Sergei, Magnitsky’s family, friends and former colleagues face the camera to speak about the man who campaigned for justice ever since he was a child, even during his unlawful detention. And how he stood up against corruption in his country, which was to prove fatal to him.