Babi Yar

Synopsis

On September 29th and 30th, 1941 Sonderkommando 4a led by SS-Standartenführer Paul Blobel, assisted by Wehrmacht units and the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police, and without any resistance from the local population, shot dead in the Babi Yar ravine almost the entire remaining Jewish population of the city of Kiev – 33,771 people.

About the Director

Sergei Loznitsa was born on September 5th, 1964.He grew up in Kiev (Ukraine), and in 1987 graduated from the Kiev Polytechnic with a degree in Applied Mathematics. From 1987-1991 Sergei worked as a scientist at the Kiev Institute of Cybernetics, specializing in artificial intelligence research. In 1997, Loznitsa 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 25 award-winning documentaries and 4 fiction films. Loznitsa’s feature debut My Joy (2010) premiered in the main competition at the Festival de Cannes, and was followed by the feature film In the Fog (2012), which was awarded FIPRESCI prize at the 65th Festival de Cannes. In 2017, Sergei Loznitsa presented his third feature A Gentle Creature in the competition of the Festival de Cannes. 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. In 2013, Sergei Loznitsa founded a film production company Atoms & Void. Sergei Loznitsa’s feature-length documentary Madien (2014), which chronicles the Ukrainian revolution, had its world premiere at a Séance Special of Festival de Cannes. His subsequent feature length documentaries, The Event (2015), Austerlitz (2016), The Trial (2018) and State Funeral (2019) were presented at the Special Screenings of the Venice Film Festival. In 2021, Sergei received a Special Jury Prize of the L’Oeil D’Or Award in Cannes for his film Babi Yar.Context. Sergei Loznitsa continues to work on both documentary and fiction projects