Scent Evidence

synopsis

The scent trail as an evidentiary method in criminal proceedings was invented in the USSR and subsequently developed by the East German secret police and widely used against opponents of the regime. Since the 1980s, it has become a common part of police and judicial practice, even in the post-communist Czech Republic. Zuzana Piussi's latest film continues the director's investigative work dealing with the problematic construction of reality and dead ends in Central European justice. It follows the fate of people who seek retrials of unfair court proceedings and, in the wake of this, asks whether the method of proving the presence of a person at a crime scene based on the scent detected by a dog is really impartial or how it is possible that a scent trail is often sufficient as the only evidence to convict suspects, even though it is questioned by scientists.

“The method takes advantage of the undoubted sensitivity and discriminating ability of dogs to identify certain substances in trace amounts and has relevance in many cases. The problem arose when the Czech judiciary and police apparatus uncritically adopted it in the practice of the post-communist justice administration and established it at the level of key evidence – in other words, if a suspect's scent trace is identified as positive, it is sufficient for a conviction without or despite other evidence.”

Source: D1Film

biography

Slovak actress, director and documentary filmmaker Zuzana Piussi (1971) studied directing at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava and worked in the Bratislava Stoka Theatre in the 1990s. In her work, which is dominated by investigative films, she focuses on specific socio-political causes such as the abuse of justice, corruption and Slovak nationalism. Her films The Hero of Our Time (2008), The Grasp of the State (2012), Fragile Identity (2012), The State Capture (2019) and Ordeal (2021) were screened at Ji.hlava IDFF, and in 2022 she presented her feature debut Unbalanced.

more about film

director:	Zuzana Piussi
producer:	Vít Janeček
script:	Zuzana Piussi
photography:	Zuzana Piussi
editing:	Sebastián Kučkovský
music:	Lucia Piussi
sound:	Jan Richtr
executive producer:	Vít Janeček

contact

Vít Janeček / D1film s.r.o.
vit@d1film.com