2020 Film Festival
film synopsis
Master filmmaker Agnieszka Holland returns with this riveting biopic of steadfast Welsh journalist Gareth Jones (marvelously played by Little Women's James Norton), who first blew the whistle on Holodomor, Stalin's man-made genocidal famine in Soviet Ukraine that took nearly seven million lives. After making a name for himself following a chance interview with Adolf Hitler, the ambitious young Jones heads to the Soviet Union to investigate suspiciously pro-Stalin articles from famed Pulitzer Prize winner and The New York Times writer Walter Duranty (Peter Sarsgaard). With equal parts cleverness and luck - not to mention help from fellow journalist Ada Brooks (The Queen's Vanessa Kirby) - Jones evades authorities to enter Ukraine where he uncovers an atrocity so shocking that many refuse to believe him. Holland blends her large-scale historical epic with a powerful, introspective look at a lesser-known 20th-century hero whose courageous battle to expose the truth still rings alarmingly familiar.