Babi Yar is the ravine at the edge of the Ukrainian capital Kiev where one of the largest mass executions in history took place. Sergei Loznitsa tells this documentary account in meticulous detail, building from the lead up to the aftermath of the two days in September 1941, when Nazis shot dead 33,771 Jews at this place.
The mass execution forms the silent core of this film constructed entirely from archive footage, to which sound has been added in some cases. Loznitsa used a similar technique in other films such as Blockade (2006), about the siege of Leningrad. By precluding almost any form of interpretation, he ensures that the archive footage speaks for itself. And speak it does. It bears inescapable witness to not only the atrocities, but also the subsequent compliance of the city and its inhabitants. We see posters of Hitler willingly stuck on windows, only to be scraped off after the occupation ends, in an act of erasure that the ravine site itself came to suffer as well.
Nominated for the Beeld en Geluid IDFA ReFrame Award
Credits
Director
Sergei Loznitsa
Production
Sergei Loznitsa / Atoms & Void, Maria Choustova / Atoms & Void
Co-production
Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center
Editing
Sergei Loznitsa, Tomasz Wolski, Danielius Kokanauskis
Sound Design
Vladimir Golovnitski
Related articles
Related films
Three Minutes – A Lengthening
In found vacation footage from 1938, the Jewish residents of a Polish village wave cheerfully at the camera. Who were they? Bianca Stigter’s quest for answers postpones their inevitable fate, creating a cinematic Holocaust memorial.
More info
Mr. Landsbergis
Singing even a peaceful song can unleash a revolution. Lithuanian politician Vytautas Landsbergis looks back on his country’s independence struggle in this captivating masterclass on the collapse of the Soviet Union by the great chronicler Sergei Loznitsa.
More infoIDFA history
2021
Dutch Premiere
Masters
Masters