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The article aims to study the social dynamics underlying legal proceedings against World War II alleged perpetrators in the Soviet Union through an examination of three Latvian documentary films dedicated to Nazi crimes and trials in the 1960s.Tracing the history of the commissioning, production, distribution and reception of these films sheds new light on the interplay between the film industry, the judiciary and the police. The originality of these films, which reflect the professional use of images by the authorities, lies in their ability to inform us about the role conferred on the visual in the investigation itself. Aimed at audiences whose expectations were of concern both to filmmakers and other actors involved in the media coverage of trials, these documentaries also make it possible to identify the developments that took place over that decade and to challenge the vision of a univocal and presumably propagandist filming of legal proceedings. Gradually, the filmmakers’ emotional commitment is abandoned in favor of a focus on neutrality markers and oral testimony. The article explores the social resonances of the trials by looking at the filmmakers’ practices, equipment and ways of transcribing reality into images.