Babi Yar. Context (2021)

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Babi Yar. Context, also known as Babyn Yar. Context, is a 2021 documentary film by the Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa that explores the prelude and aftermath of the World War II massacre of nearly 34,000 Jews at Babi Yar in Kyiv, Ukraine in September 1941.

Production

In creating the film, Loznitsa drew on footage shot by German and Soviet troops during and after the war, as well as testimony from a 1946 Soviet trial of the perpetrators. According to Loznitsa, most of the footage had "languished unseen after the war." The film was obtained from German, Ukrainian, and Russian archival sources.

The massacre itself was not photographed, but the film shows earlier persecution of Jews in Lviv, as well as incarceration of Soviet prisoners in open-air stockades. Footage also shows testimony at the trial by a survivor and by Hans Isenmann, one of the SS perpetrators of the massacre, as well as scenes from the Red Army's November 1943 recapture of Kyiv.

The film shows Ukrainians greeting the Nazi invaders, and as well as scenes of joyous Red Army prisoners being released to their families by the Germans in 1941. Throughout, "Loznitsa suggests, in no uncertain terms, that the surviving locals were complicit" in the Babi Yar massacre.

The film's soundtrack consists of ambient noise and music introduced by Loznitsa.

Some of the newly unearthed footage shows buildings in central Kyiv destroyed by the Soviets a few days after the German occupation began. The buildings were mined before the Soviet retreat by the NKVD secret police, and were detonated from afar by remote control.

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