It’s June 1941 in Soviet Ukraine. The birds are singing. The sun is shining. Suddenly, explosions are heard and black smoke fills the air. People walk past, strangely oblivious to the signs of violence and destruction surrounding them. These are the opening scenes of Sergei Loznitsa’s new feature documentary Babi Yar. Context, a world premiere in Cannes this week. The film looks behind the story of one of the most horrific massacres of the Second World War.
“On September 29-30 1941, Sonderkommando 4a of the Einsatzgruppe C, assisted by two battalions of the Police Regiment South and Ukrainian Auxiliary Police, and without any resistance from the local population, shot dead in the Babi Yar ravine in the north-west of Kiev 33, 771 Jews,” reads Loznitsa’s terse, forensic, matter of fact description of the appalling events.
“In 2016, I made a documentary Austerlitz. It is about “concentration camp tourism”, a phenomenon which is flourishing today, or at least was flourishing before the pandemics. Though very different in style, this film also addresses the issues of memory and the trauma of Holocaust,” Loznitsa explains the tone of the new film. He suggests that he has never before been this far into “the heart of darkness,” a startling assertion given the grim subject matter of much of the Ukrainian filmmaker’s previous work from Second World dramas like In The Fog to more contemporary films like The Trial.
The Babi Yar massacred wasn’t discussed when Loznitsa was growing up. It was as if it had been erased from memory. The Soviet Union had committed its own crimes and didn’t want to focus too intently on a massacre overseen by the Nazis.
“When one thinks about it, it becomes obvious that for Stalin, who had killed and tortured millions of his own compatriots, it would have been “counter-productive” to talk about the crimes of the Nazis against the civilians, as there was a very strong degree of resemblance in the crimes of both Nazis and Soviets,” the director suggests. “Of course, when I grew up, I started reading books about [the] Holocaust and I gradually came to the understanding of the complexities and intricacies of the whole situation, which eventually led to this horrific mass murder, the biggest massacre in the history of [the] Holocaust. “
The footage used in the documentary comes from various archives – both public and private. The filmmakers worked with the Russian State Archive of Film and Photo documents in Krasnogorsk (RGAKFD) near Moscow, with the Bundesarchiv in Berlin, with several regional archives in Germany, with the Ukrainian State Archive in Kiev and with private archives.
“The most challenging part for me was to find a structure and to build a comprehensive narrative from the fragmented pieces I have managed to collect. And, of course, there is no footage of the massacre itself (though even if there had been, I’m not sure it would have been possible to include it in the edit). So I had to use photographs and intertitles in order to build a narrative and to put the events in a kind of chronological order,” Loznitsa says of the intricate work involved in piecing together the documentary.
Loznitsa was at VGIK (the celebrated Russian film school) at the same time as Ilya Khrzhanovskiy, the director of the epic Dau series of films and art installations about life in the Soviet Union. Khrzhanovskiy is an associate producer on Babi Yar. Context and was one of the people who persuaded Loznitsa to make the documentary.
“Soon after Khrzhanovskiy was appointed the artistic director of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center, he approached me with the proposal to create something for them. I immediately suggested that we make a documentary, based on the footage I have collected,” the director recalls of the material he was planning to use in a feature film about the massacre – a project which he still has in active development.
“Ilya is a visionary and a very charismatic person, and he managed to put together a very interesting and challenging programme for the future Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Museum,” Loznitsa continues. “The project is multifaceted, and it involves thorough historical and archival research, as well as curating a number of cultural projects with the leading international artists, writers, photographers and filmmakers. We expect to premiere the film in Kiev in September as part of the commemorative programme, dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the massacre.”
The documentary will eventually become a part of the permanent collection of the new museum. In the meantime, the director is preparing for his Cannes premiere.
“I think that Cannes is a perfect setting for this film – isn’t it the purpose of the festival to give a platform for the cinema which challenges artistic and intellectual stereotypes? To give a voice to the directors, who are searching for the new ways of expression,” he asks. “My goal is for this film to be shown and seen all over the world, and we are very happy that the film’s journey will begin in Cannes….”
