I don’t know the actual name, but in my history class (the great patriotic war) we watched a soviet era law film about a defence lawyer being chosen for a show trial, I think set during the 30’s) and how he tries to treat it seriously and defends his client and does everything right and gets evidence his client is innocent (obvious given it’s a show trial) and runs smack into the authorities who, I can’t remember the ending, I don’t think he dies or gets punished for trying too hard, but his client definitely gets the wall.

I want to say the name was something like “defence lawyer ‘insert Russian name here’”.

I can’t even remember if it was good, but it didn’t seem actively bad. If anyone can figure out the title that’d be cool, it was over 15 years ago when I got my degree and it was just like a soft class the professor gave us during term paper round up so I have such vague memories of it.

Edit: I looked myself and it appears to be “My Friend Ivan Lapshin”. Edit edit: it may not be this, it seems vaguely possible but it’s too hard to identify as this doesn’t have anything to do with the lawyer angle, but is set in time period I recall.