Den højeste straf

Rarely do we get a movie about the crimes of communism - although communism was responsible for 100 million deaths during the 20th century. And many more if you count the people who died prematurely from living below the poverty line without adequate health care, nutrition and housing because of failed centralist planning policies.

But now the former head of the Danish communist party, Ole Sohn, has made a documentary about the death of a Danish communist who visited the Soviet Union in the late 1930s and disappeared. The movie, which is directed by Danish director Tomas Gislason, tracks Sohn's attempt to discover what happened to the Danish communist Arne Munch Petersen.

The movie documents the horrors of the Stalin regime. Sohn goes to Gulag, visits the prisons in Moscow, interviews the survivors. It is in a way similar to Claude Lanzmann's masterpiece Shoah (1985) about the holocaust.

If you are interested in the terrors of communism, this movie is a must! It contains Danish and Russian dialogue, but a subtitled version is available. The title translates "Maximum Penalty".