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This is a film made by Andriy Zagdansky about his father, the screenwriter Yevgeni Zagdansky, who was the editor-in-chief of the Kyivnaukfilm studio for almost 20 years. The story is interspersed with fragments of popular science films and letters from Yevgeni Zagdansky to his son in New York in the 1990s, creating a portrait of both the person himself and the whole era. My Father Evgeni is a film not just about the inevitable generational conflict and the pain of a father’s separation from his son, but also about the events of the 20th century, about people who read banned books, and about the Kyiv that shaped the Zagdanskys.
Director
Writer
Status
Released
Original Language
RU
When Allied forces liberated the Nazi concentration camps in 1944-45, their terrible discoveries were recorded by army and newsreel cameramen, revealing for the first time the full horror of what had happened. Making use of British, Soviet and American footage, the Ministry of Information’s Sidney Bernstein (later founder of Granada Television) aimed to create a documentary that would provide lasting, undeniable evidence of the Nazis’ unspeakable crimes. He commissioned a wealth of British talent, including editor Stewart McAllister, writer and future cabinet minister Richard Crossman – and, as treatment advisor, his friend Alfred Hitchcock. Yet, despite initial support from the British and US Governments, the film was shelved, and only now, 70 years on, has it been restored and completed by Imperial War Museums under its original title "German Concentration Camps Factual Survey".
