The film reconstructs the historical context of the massacre which took place on 29–30 September 1941, when Sonderkommando 4a of the Einsatzgruppe C, assisted by two battalions of the Police Regiment South and Ukrainian Auxiliary Police, shot dead 33,771 Jews in the Babi Yar ravine. With his careful attention to detail, Sergei Loznitsa uncovers the complex circumstances that led to this horrific event, examining the repressive policy of both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. The film is constructed entirely from archival footage, with sound added in some cases, bearing witness to the atrocities that took place during the occupation and the subsequent decade.
This event is part of Witnessing History, a comprehensive programme celebrating the multifaceted oeuvre of Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa, taking place from 2–10 June. Loznitsa has established himself as one of Europe’s leading filmmakers, producing numerous award-winning documentaries and feature films over a twenty-five-year career. In his work, he dares to dispassionately consider the most painful and important pages of history without compromising the current social and political agenda.
The screening will take place at Ciné Lumière and will be followed by a Q&A with Sergei Loznitsa.
FILMMAKER’S BIOGRAPHY
Sergei Loznitsa is a Ukrainian film director who was born in 1964 in Baranovichi (USSR). He grew up in Kyiv, where he graduated from the Kyiv Polytechnic and worked as a scientist. In 1997, he graduated from the Russian State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) in Moscow, where he studied feature filmmaking. Sergei Loznitsa has been making films since 1996, and by now he has directed 26 award-winning documentaries and four fiction films. In 2018, Loznitsa received the prize for Best Directing of the Un Certain Regard section of Festival de Cannes for his fourth feature film, Donbass (2018). Sergei’s feature-length documentaries Maidan (2014) and Natural History of Destruction (2022) had their world premieres at Festival de Cannes, while The Event (2015), Austerlitz (2016), The Trial (2018), State Funeral (2019) and The Kiev Trial (2022) were presented at the Venice International Film Festival. Sergei Loznitsa continues to work in both documentary and fiction genres.