A very timely screening (on BBC) of a true story, screenwritten by Andrea Chalupa (her only credit), about British journalist in 1930s Moscow who is tipped off about a systematic famine being engineered in Ukraine, the wheat from where is being used to drive the Stalinist regime forward. He manages to travel to the banned Ukraine area and discovers the Holodomor ('death by hunger'), which killed 3.5 - 5 million people, for himself.
Holland's film is perhaps a touch too Steadicam in places but is nicely lit by Tomasz Naumiak and edited by Michal Czarnecki (it was a many country co-production). The in-parallel development of George Orwell's 'Animal Farm' is a neat touch. Stand-out scenes are long single take flight into forest, cannibal children.
Good cast: James Norton, Vanessa Kirby, Peter Sarsgaard, Joseph Mawle, Kenneth Cranham, Fenella Woolgar.
The murders - of the journalist who tips off Jones in the first place, and subsequently of Jones himself - are distinctly Russian.
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