Note : The authorization to screen the film, given on September 28, 2022, was withdrawn by the Ministry of Culture on October 28, 2022. The film was then visible on YouTube.
Plot synopsis
The film chronicles the Great Famine that spread in the early 1920s across 35 provinces of Soviet Russia and affected a population of approximately 90 million. The Volga regions, Ukraine, Bashkiria, Kazakhstan and Western Siberia suffered in particular. The film not only talks about this disaster and its causes, but also relates how citizens of different countries tried to help the victims. In the film "Famine" there is no text written by the author, only the comments of witnesses and historians.
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The Russian Ministry of Culture has revoked the screening license issued to “Famine,” a documentary made by Alexander Alrkhangelsky, Maxim Kurnikov, and Tatiana Sorokina.
Alexander Arkhangelsy, the screenwriter behind “Famine,” was among the first to learn that the film was being banned, and that it supposedly contains “information whose spread is prohibited by the federal law.” In a Facebook post, Arkhangelsky criticized the revocation:
What law is it, exactly, that forbids talking about the fact that there was a famine in 1921–1923? That more than five million people died, and that the world (far from the entire world, by the way) managed to overcome ideological barriers in solidarity with the suffering Russian people? And that, thanks to this, more than 10 million lives had been saved? This is a betrayal of our history and of our family memories.
Arkhangelsky pointed out that the film contains no narrative apart from quotations: the entire script is put together from the texts of documents found in Russia’s publicly accessible archives.
“Famine” is now banned from all Russian theaters. “We’re going to screen it in museums, galleries, and universities. We hope it might appear on YouTube towards the end of this year,” said the screenwriter.
https://meduza.io/en/news/2022/11/14/russian-culture-ministry-bans-famine-documentary-from-theaters
