The Polish Institute, in cooperation with the Embassy of Ukraine and the British Council, organized a screening of “Mr. Jones” directed by Agnieszka Holland.
Academy Award nominee Agnieszka Holland brought to the screen the untold story of Gareth Jones, an ambitious young Welsh journalist who travelled to the Soviet Union in 1933 and uncovered the appalling truth behind the Soviet “utopia” and Stalin’s regime.
The screening took place on June 13 at 7 p.m. in the Stein Auditorium of the prestigious India Habitat Centre. In the audience were present: Ambassador of Ukraine to the Republic of India Dr. Oleksandr Polishchuk; Ms Alison Barrett MBE Director India, British Council; Dr Magdalena Filipczuk, Acting Director of Polish Institute; Mr Abhay Kumar, Deputy Director General of Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), New Delhi.
The screening was preceded by a short lecture on the work of Agnieszka Holland given by a renowned Indian journalist and film critic, Mr Murtaza Ali Khan.
About the movie:
It’s 1933. Gareth Jones is an ambitious young Welsh journalist who gained fame after his report on being the first foreign journalist to fly with Hitler. Whilst working as an advisor to Lloyd George, he is now looking for his next big story. The Soviet “utopia” is all over the news, and Jones is intrigued as to how Stalin is financing the rapid modernization of the Soviet Union.
Leaving his government role, Jones decides to travel to Moscow in an attempt to get an interview with Stalin himself. There he meets Ada Brooks, a British journalist working in Moscow, who reveals that the truth behind the regime is being violently repressed. Hearing murmurs of government-induced famine, a secret carefully guarded by the Soviet censors, Jones manages to elude the authorities and travels clandestinely to Ukraine, where he witnesses the atrocities of man-made starvation – millions left to starve – as all grain is sold abroad to finance the industrializing Soviet empire.
Deported back to London, Jones publishes an article revealing the horrors he witnessed. But the starvation is denied by Western journalists reporting from Moscow, all under pressure from the Kremlin, including Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Walter Duranty. As death threats mount, Jones has to fight for the truth. Meeting a young author by the name of George Orwell, Jones shares his findings, helping to inspire the great allegorical novel “Animal Farm”.
