Sergei Loznitsa Talks ‘Deconstructing’ Archive Footage, His ‘Hardest’ Film ‘Babi Yar. Context’: ‘I Found Myself in the Center of the Cyclone’

variety.com:

Marta Balaga Sergei Loznitsa met with “immediate confrontation” following the premiere of “Babi Yar. Context,” he revealed at Ji.hlava Documentary Film Festival.

The film focused on the massacre of nearly 34,000 Jews at Babi Yar in Kyiv, Ukraine in 1941. “I found myself in the center of the cyclone with this one.

Ukraine was the only country where this film was heavily criticized. It’s a painful story and dangerous footage. I was editing it for a very long time, waiting for my emotions to go down,” he added, describing the film as his “hardest” one yet. “I don’t know how it has transformed me, but maybe it’s just my destiny to touch on these kinds of topics.” Addressing the audience remotely during the Conference on Ethics in Documentary Filmmaking, Loznitsa – who also presented his 2020 release “A Night in the Opera” – commented: “If we consider film as art, there is no ethics in art.

Ethics exist in our life. We can talk about it only when we talk about how we make documentaries.” That being said, there is still a certain kind of footage he just won’t use. “When I was making ‘Babi Yar,’ there was material I couldn’t watch and couldn’t use.