It was a genuine privilege to co-host the UK premiere of the film From Babyn Yar to Freedom this week in collaboration with the theatre company Dash Arts. Made by Ukrainian director Oleg Chorny in 2017, the film tells the life story of the Soviet writer Anatoly Kuznetsov and his mission to bring the world’s attention to the full horror of the Babyn Yar massacre of September 1941. Kuznetsov defected to the UK in 1969 with the smuggled, uncensored text of his masterpiece, Babi Yar: A Document in the Form of a Novel.
Babyn Yar was a ravine in Kyiv that witnessed the “Holocaust by bullets” of 100,000 predominantly Jewish people. However, before the publication of Kuznetsov’s book in the West, the Moscow authorities had insisted on the essentially Soviet-Ukrainian identity of the victims.
The private screening of the film was made possible by the Jewish Community centre, JW3, which hosted the invitation-only premiere. The remarkable film traces Kuznetsov’s life in Kyiv and London by talking to those who knew him, including his son Olexiy, whom the writer left behind in the Soviet Union when he fled to the West.
Unfortunately, it has not been possible to release the film more widely because of a dispute over footage from a 1969 interview with Kuznetsov by CBS News journalist Morley Safer. Index and Dash hope publicity around the screening will held break the deadlock over the rights to the interview.
The screening was followed by a discussion led by Josephine Burton, the artistic director of Dash Arts, who used Kuznetsov’s words in the 2021 production Songs for Babyn Yar. Burton has been a tireless advocate for the film and contacted me after I launched a fundraiser for Kuznetsov’s unmarked grave in London’s Highgate Cemetery. Director Oleg Chorny and assistant producer Natalia Klymchuk fielded questions from the audience over video link from Kyiv.
Several mysteries still surround the story of Kuznetsov. Was he right to suspect he was being targeted by the KGB in London? Was his death from a heart attack at 49 in 1979 suspicious? And why does his surviving daughter not want his grave marked?
Index will follow up on suggestions from audience members about the rights issues over the interview footage and we call on CBS to do the decent thing and ensure the film is released to the wider television and cinematic audience it deserves.
You can read about From Babyn Yar to Freedom in the latest edition of Index. Dash Arts is currently working on a new project on Ukraine, The Reckoning in collaboration with The Reckoning Project, based on testimonies of Russian war crimes in Ukraine.
