A Ukrainian film-maker and mathematician. Dozens of international awards attest to the quality of the work of one of the essential film-makers of our time. Among more than 25 films over 23 years, Maidan (2014) shows the recent revolution in Ukraine; Donbass (2018) describes the protests after the Crimea was annexed to Russia and the war in the Donbass region; Babi Yar (2021) deals with the massacre of 33,771 Jews in Kiev during the Nazi occupation of Ukraine in 1941; The Trial (2018), premièred at the Venice Biennale, in which Loznitsa works with archives on the first trials in Moscow in the 30s; State Funeral (2019), an incisive look at material from Soviet cameras during Stalin’s state funeral; and Mr Landsbergis (2021) on Lithuania’s break with Russia. His last film, based on shots of allied bombing of Nazi Germany, The Natural History of Destruction (2022), makes a link with the war in Ukraine and the suffering of the civilian population.
In each film, whether fiction or documentary, Loznitsa explores archive material, history and our view of the Soviet past, the events of recent years and the need – or the duty – of memory.
