Mister Jones and the depiction of the Holodomor on the world screen

Abstract

ABSTRACT Agnieszka Holland’s film Mr Jones (2019) tells the story of the Welsh journalist Gareth Jones, who reported in the Western press about the mass famine (Holodomor) in Ukraine in 1932–1933. Few in the West were willing to accept the crimes of the Soviet regime against Ukrainians, which Jones carefully recorded and tried to convey to politicians, governments, and society in the West. However, his evidence was not widely accepted and attempts were made to discredit him in the media. He died prematurely under mysterious circumstances. This article explores the story of Gareth Jones’s uncovering of the Holodomor in relation to the depiction of the terrifying experience of watching death and dying on screen. As a large-scale co-production between Great Britain, Poland and Ukraine, Mr Jones calls for analysis as an auteur film conveying the tragic events of the Holodomor within the context of the present time. The powerful contemporary resonance of the film is based on the dangers of ‘fake news’ and their destructive consequences, and Ukrainians’ desire for international recognition of the Holodomor.