Mr. Jones in the Berlinale competition : The truth about Stalin's famine News

Not a bad idea to remember in times of Fake News because it is the truth. Not only is the interest-based truth, which fits in their own Agenda, but the knowledge of what happened. The so-called Holodomor, the famine in the Ukraine in 1932/33, called for millions of deaths. It was probably Stalin, who was responsible for them, be it intentionally, be it as a "side effect" of the forced collectivization in the grain storage in Ukraine. This is also part of the Revolution, to the great Communist Experiment.

One of the few journalists that came to pass and the world public opinion about the cold, death-informed farmers, emaciated, and out of sheer desperation, human flesh-consuming children, was of Welsh policy consultant and Reporter, Gareth Jones. A name of Jones was, as it to him in 1933, managed to interview Hitler. He promptly tried to have a press visa for Moscow to meet Stalin, fascinated by its modernization, but also suspicious at the question of how the Soviet Union funded the progress.

Parallel to the war in Ukraine

The Polish Director Agnieszka Holland has set "Mr. Jones", who was murdered in 1935, with not even 30 years ago, under unclear circumstances, is now a cinematic monument, with a lavishly-equipped, psychological, political history film. You know this Look from her previous films, "Hitler boy Salomon" or "Bitter harvest". James Norton plays sympathetic to the title character as a reason, Nickel bespectacled human friend (a little reminiscent of Roger Willemsen). The decadent, corrupt force of the Moscow capital correspondent leaves Jones soon in order to travel secretly to Ukraine, and to suffer there, almost the starvation. He is taken up, and in the West deported back to where him, however, no one wants to believe, as he reported from the misery in the Ukraine. Not at all as the Pulitzer prize winner and "New York Times"correspondent Walter Duranty (Peter Sarsgaard) in a abwiegelt article. No, there is no famine in the Soviet Union.

It is like François ozone-abuse drama "Grâce à Dieu". The criminal deeds follows the next crime, the falsehood, the ignorance, the Silence. Agnieszka Holland draws a further Parallel, which would have provoked the current war in the Ukraine, the "Stalin's heirs".

Berlinale 2019 - competitive film view more images of 1 of 25Foto: By Amesen / Berlinale29.01.2019 09:18The Chinese Director Wang Quan'an returns with "Öndög" in the Mongolian Steppe, where his bear-winner...Back More

sets other than their anarchic revenge drama "Potok" (Berlinale 2017) "Mr. Jones" on classical drama, Wow-effects (the massive steam train trips to Moscow, the phone cable in Close-Ups, the secret service intercepted conversation, connections), opulent furnishings and architectures of Power. Babylon Moscow: The frivolous parties in the Soviet capital to form the greatest possible contrast to the misery in the Ukraine. After all, the Director waives a flavor enhancer, is aware of the limits of representation also of the Holodomors, the images are sketchy, almost black-and-white in the gloomy winter landscape, as if they were traumatized themselves.

"I don't fit in these times. And you?“ George Orwell (Joseph Mawle) asks in the movie – Orwell's dystopian novel "Animal Farm" is from Jones' Soviet Union-report inspired. Also in today's times, so Holland, there are plenty of conformists and egoists and a few people like Orwell and Jones.

More about