Saturday, November 14: 6:30 pm

Fed by four major rivers, Ukraine is a land of fertile steppes that used to be known as the Breadbasket of the Soviet Union. A Slavic culture that was once the hub of Europe, 20th century Ukraine has been carved up and dominated successively by Russians, Austro-Hungarians, and Soviets, all of whom recognized its strategic value. When Stalin implemented forced collectivization as part of his Five Year Plan to industrialize and de-privatize the USSR, he ordered Communist officials in the Ukraine to starve the resistant rural population. The resulting Holodomor was witnessed by few outsiders; one of these, British journalist Gareth Jones, left behind evidence in his personal diaries. While sharing entries of these piercing, first-hand accounts, director Sergiy Bukovsky juxtaposes propaganda cinema of the era showing a happy, productive peasant population against snippets of testimony of Holodomor survivors. Children at the time, these witnesses’ scattered remembrances slowly fit together to complete a horrific chapter in Soviet history, which cost the lives of 25,000 Ukrainians each day.