Loznitsa plans project about Nazi massacre

The Babi Yar massacre of September 1941 when 30,000 Jews were killed by Nazi troops over a three-day period could be the subject of the third fiction feature film by Sergei Loznitsa whose latest film In The Fog (V Tumane) [pictured] has its world premiere in the Official Selection on May 26.

Speaking exclusively to Screen Daily at this year’s goEast festival in Wiesbaden where he was honoured with an homage, Loznitsa explained that “in the Soviet times, there was a kind of taboo associated with this subject; for some reasons, the authorities wanted to cover the story up.”

A film about the massacre in the Babi Yar ravine near Kiev is one of five story ideas Loznitsa is currently developing for fiction films. “The next one will naturally depend on the financing possibilities,” he said. “Some of the stories could be low budget like In The Fog at around €2m and others would need higher budgets for them to be realised in the way I want them to be made.”

Loznitsa revealed that he has not left documentaries completely behind despite making the two fiction films My Joy and now In The Fog. “I have just made a small 20-minute experimental documentary entitled Letter about a disturbing sensation of paradise, which will hopefully be completed this summer,” he said. “I cannot leave documentary altogether because it is like a laboratory where I can experiment. In fiction cinema I have a huge responsibility regarding the budget, but documentary gives me a freedom and I can do whatever somersaults I like.”