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"Babi Yar. Context", unveiled at the Cannes
Film Festival, tells the story of the mass killing that marked
the start of the Holocaust in occupied Soviet Ukraine, as well
as surrounding events.
"It is a deep history and we have to know our history, and films
must provoke interest in our history," Loznitsa said at the
launch.
Nazi German forces shot dead an estimated 34,000 Jewish men,
women and children on Sept. 29-30, 1941, in a large ravine known
both as Babi Yar and Babyn Yar, on the edge of Kyiv.
The 56-year-old director said he grew up in the city, not far
from the site, and found traces of the past as he wandered
around as a child.
"I remember the stones which they left ... when they destroyed
the Jewish cemetery. The stones were in the bushes," he said. "I
asked myself what happened here, what is it?"
But the adults around him were not forthcoming. "They would say,
when you will grow up you will know."
"Babi Yar. Context' is Loznitsa's seventh film at the Cannes
festival. In 2012, his movie "In the Fog" competed for the Palme
d'Or.
In May, Ukraine unveiled a synagogue built of wood and designed
to unfold like a pop-up book at a site commemorating the victims
of the massacre.
(Reporting by Michaela Cabrera and Hedy Beloucif; Writing by
Andrew Heavens; Editing by Janet Lawrence)
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