Legendary Director Agnieszka Holland and Screenwriter Andrea Chapula on the Ukrainian Famine and Their Film "Mr. Jones"

Director Agnieszka Holland (l) and writer Andrea Chalupa (r)

Director Agnieszka Holland is celebrated for her career in filmmaking and screenwriting and for her political activism in Poland. Among her achievements as a filmmaker, she collaborated on the screenplay adaptation of Andrzej Wajda's Danton (1983), then directed Angry Harvest (1985), which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. In 1992, she earned even greater international acclaim, including a Golden Globe Award and an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay for Europa Europa, based on the true story of a young boy who joins the Hitler Youth to hide his Jewish identity. In 2010, Holland was Nominated for an Emmy in Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series for her work on HBO's Treme (2010). A year later, her feature film, In Darkness, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. In 2017 she received Alfred Bauer Prize (Silver Bear) for her film Spoor at the Berlin International Film Festival. And, in 2020, she was elected President of the European Film Academy.          

Andrea Chalupa, the screenwriter of Mr. Jones, is a journalist and the author of Orwell and The Refugees: The Untold Story of Animal Farm. She has written for TIME, The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, and Forbes. She has spoken widely on Ukraine affairs and is a founder of DigitalMaidan, an online movement that in recent years made the Ukrainian protests the top trending topic on Twitter worldwide. She also hosts the Gaslit Nation podcast she focuses on authoritarianism at home and abroad in her broadcasts. Her expertise includes Ukrainian language, history and politics.

Robin Lindley is a Seattle-based writer and attorney. He is features editor for the History News Network (hnn.us), and his work also has appeared at Bill Moyers.com, Salon.com, Writer’s Chronicle, Re-Markings, Crosscut, Documentary, NW Lawyer, Real Change, Huffington Post,  and more. He has a special interest in the history of human rights and conflict. He can be reached by email: robinlindley@gmail.com.

Starvation. A protracted, agonizing way to die. As described by Professor Anne Applebaum in her book Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine (2017), starvation follows a set course once the human body is deprived of food. The body initially consumes its stores of glucose as one grows hungry and thinks constantly of food. In the next few weeks, the body consumes its fats and weakens dramatically. Then, the body cannibalizes its tissues and muscles, and the skin thins, the eyes distend, and the legs and belly swell as chemical imbalances result in water retention. Even small efforts cause exhaustion. As the vital organs fail, infections or illnesses such as pneumonia, typhus, diphtheria, and others may hasten death.

Millions of Ukrainians died in this manner during the horrific famine in 1932-33. The Soviet government under Stalin engineered this genocidal atrocity through policies that killed mostly poor farmers and their families as the Soviet secret police eliminated Ukrainian leaders and intellectuals. Ukrainians refer to intentional famine as the Holodomor—meaning “death by hunger” in Ukrainian. Ukrainians were denied access to grain that was sent out of the region. Men, women and children were reduced to eating weeds, tree bark, wall paint, the corpses of animals. And there were also many incidents of cannibalism.

The Soviet crackdown was a response to Ukrainian resistance to collectivization of farms and other Stalinist policies. Casualty figures range from three million to an astounding fourteen million deaths. In Red Famine, Professor Applebaum contends that at least three million Ukrainians died because the Soviet state deliberately planned to kill them in the Holodomor.

The west knew almost nothing of this mass campaign to destroy the people of Ukraine. A Welsh journalist, Gareth Jones, secretly and courageously gained access to restricted, famine-plagued regions of Ukraine and reported back to the Western press on this widespread catastrophe. Jones’s reports of the famine shocked readers, but the stories were undermined by Soviet propaganda denying his accounts as well as by Western journalists who reported uncritically on the Soviet government to gain Stalin’s favor.

In her recent feature film Mr. Jones, legendary Polish film director Agnieszka Holland depicts the Ukrainian famine through the perspective of the reporter Gareth Jones. The film captures the tenacity and bravery of Jones and the array of forces pitted against him to keep the brutal reality of the famine from escaping the boundaries of Ukraine. The film is based on archival research, diaries, survivor accounts, and other material, much of it uncovered by Andrea Chalupa, the screenwriter for Mr. Jones and expert on Ukrainian history and politics,

Ms. Holland and Ms. Chalupa graciously responded to a series of question about the making of Mr. Jones, the history of the Ukrainian famine, their research process, and more.

 Director Agnieszka Holland is celebrated for her career in filmmaking and screenwriting and for her political activism in Poland. Among her achievements as a filmmaker, she collaborated on the screenplay adaptation of Andrzej Wajda's Danton (1983), then directed Angry Harvest (1985), which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. In 1992, she earned even greater international acclaim, including a Golden Globe Award and an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay for Europa Europa, based on the true story of a young boy who joins the Hitler Youth to hide his Jewish identity. In 2010, Holland was Nominated for an Emmy in Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series for her work on HBO's Treme (2010). A year later, her feature film, In Darkness, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. In 2017 she received Alfred Bauer Prize (Silver Bear) for her film Spoor at the Berlin International Film Festival. And, in 2020, she was elected President of the European Film Academy.          

Andrea Chalupa, the screenwriter of Mr. Jones, is a journalist and the author of Orwell and The Refugees: The Untold Story of Animal Farm. She has written for TIME, The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, and Forbes. She has spoken widely on Ukraine affairs and is a founder of DigitalMaidan, an online movement that in recent years made the Ukrainian protests the top trending topic on Twitter worldwide. She also hosts the Gaslit Nation podcast she focuses on authoritarianism at home and abroad in her broadcasts. Her expertise includes Ukrainian language, history and politics.

Robin Lindley: How did you both work together on this cinematic historical opus?

Andrea Chapula: Great! It was very easy to work on the script with Agnieszka. We both seemed to be on the same page about most things the entire time. I sent her the script and met with her by phone in August 2015, and she agreed to direct the film September 2015. Then we were off and running. It took us about three years to raise financing and cast the film. 

Agnieszka Holland: We have always worked well together. Andrea wrote the script by herself; and I started to do my own research and then participated in the consecutive versions of the script. I had my own extensive knowledge of Holodomor history, as I read Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands and several other books about the Holodomor, Stalinian politics of collectivization, and Stalin’s other crimes.   

Robin Lindley: I sense that most Americans (including me) know little about the Ukrainian famine yet this crime against humanity was one of the greatest atrocities in history. How would you briefly introduce this horrific history to readers?

Andrea Chapula: The Holodomor, the Ukrainian word for death by hunger, is Stalin’s genocide famine that killed millions of people, the vast majority in Ukraine. 

Agnieszka Holland: I’ve always felt it as an injustice and that there is a universal gap in knowledge about communist and particularly Stalinian crimes. Even if some facts entered the conscience of the people during the Cold War, or after publication of Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, it was forgotten and forgiven since. And in Russia itself, where in every family you can find a victim of Stalin’s crimes, the memory was washed out and the majority of Russians consider murderous Stalin to be the greatest leader in Russian history. It is unjust toward the victims and dangerous for misunderstanding what is the nature of totalitarian regime. We cannot fully understand the present and hope for a healthy future if we neglect the most important lessons of the past. And it is most important to understand the past to understand the current Ukrainian and world situations. 

Robin Lindley: Was the great Ukrainian famine the result of poor Soviet policy with agricultural collectivization or was it a deliberate genocidal war on the people of Ukraine engineered by Stalin? If the latter, why would Stalin want to eliminate Ukrainians?

Andrea Chapula: The Holodomor was genocide. I wrote and directed a short documentary featuring historians Anne Applebaum, Timothy Snyder, Norman Naimark, Serhii Plokhii, Frank Sysyn, and Alexander Motyl discussing the all-out assault on Ukrainian national identity that accompanied the Soviet-engineered famine. I’ve also interviewed and watched video testimony of survivors describing how their homes were searched by soldiers who confiscated the food they had hidden. One woman described to me how soldiers came and took away the pot of water she was boiling over a fire full of twigs and leaves she was planning to eat since there was no food left. So not only was Ukraine’s grain seized and sold abroad to raise money to help rapidly modernize Stalin’s empire, there were also terror squads of soldiers and agents that searched and destroyed whatever people used to try to feed themselves just to stay alive. This was state organized mass murder.  

Agnieszka Holland: I share the opinion of many historians, that the Holodomor was not only a side effect of the mistakes of collectivization, but also deliberate politics of Stalin toward richer paysans and toward Ukrainians. Ukraine had strong feelings of independence and identity, and had rich soil and the best agricultural organization in Stalin’s territory. Stalin wanted to break their pride and resistance, and reap the riches of their soil and productivity. 

Robin Lindley: The scenes of the famine in Mr. Jones are especially haunting and heartbreaking. What did you learn about the human reality of famine and starvation? How did the famine affect individuals and families?

Andrea Chapula: Anne Applebaum’s Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine goes into how starvation kills someone slowly and the gradual effects on the body. My grandfather described how his brother was driven mad by hunger and how he had to stop his brother from shoving dirt into his mouth when he was hallucinating and seeing food.

Starvation is a slow torture; it’s a painful way to die. There are horrific stories of cannibalism and packs of orphans wandering ghost villages. The actual history would require a horror film to show it more accurately. In Mr. Jones, we only give people a glimpse of the devastation. 

Agnieszka Holland: The human reaction to the famine is the same in every circumstances. We could see it during Irish famine, Mao’s Big Leap terrible famine, Leningrad’s siege… and it’s all the more violent and destructive when famine is caused by man rather than natural catastrophe. The Holodomor is now the focus of several extensive historical and psychological studies, and we now know that the mental and physical impacts of the famine remain present in the descendants of the survivors and their families, sometimes even many generations later. 

Robin Lindley: Do you have relatives or friends who experienced the famine or other personal connections to the Holodomor?

Andrea Chapula: My grandfather on my mother’s side survived the famine with his family in east Ukraine. 

Agnieszka Holland: No, but in preparing for the film, I read many testimonials of survivors and their descendants; and shooting the film in Ukraine, I had met many Holodomor survivors and spoke with them about their experience. 

Robin Lindley: The famine occurred during the Great Depression in the US. Did the US government know of the famine and did it somehow respond?

Andrea Chapula: Ukrainian diaspora groups knew and tried to raise awareness. As we show in the film, FDR granted the Soviet Union official recognition in 1934. The scene of a fancy banquet with [New York Times reporter Walter] Duranty being toasted in New York to celebrate the US/USSR actually happened. Applebaum goes into it here. 

Agnieszka Holland: The depression was not deliberately planned by the US government. The Holodomor was deliberately planned and enforced by Stalin. So, with the Great Depression, we can speak about an incompetent reaction of a capitalistic society. In the case of Holodomor, it was a conscious, programmed crime, serving a political and ideological agenda.  

Robin Lindley: How did the famine end? Did poverty and starvation continue through the Second World War or did food shipments resume to Ukraine?

Andrea Chapula: The Holodomor ended when the process of collectivization was complete, but the cover-up continued. People weren’t allowed to talk about it inside the Soviet Union. More info here.

Robin Lindley: What was the research process for the film? The sets, costumes, props and other details are very elaborate and it’s evident that great care was taken in assuring authenticity. Of course, Ms. Holland’s films are renowned for assuring historical accuracy.

Andrea Chapula: I studied History with a focus on Soviet History at UC Davis. I spent several years researching the history that inspired the film. We also had a team of historical advisors to vet the script and the finished film. We worked with an incredible crew that ensured that they were staying within the specific period in terms of props and costumes. Even stamps and packaging on envelopes and the articles the journalists present to Duranty were all created to fit that specific moment in time. 

Agnieszka Holland: We went through an extended research process in preparing for the film, consulting photos, paintings, movies, documentaries, documents. I like to be authentic, but in the first place, to know historical reality well enough to free my imagination. 

Robin Lindley: Your movie follows the journey of the intrepid Welsh reporter Gareth Jones, played by James Norton, who learned of the famine and brought the story to the West. You show Stalinist politics and the famine through the perspective of Jones. What are a few things you’d like readers to know about the Jones? How did you learn of his story? 

Andrea Chapula: The more I dug into the real Gareth Jones, it became undeniable that he was simply a good human being with a strong character. He’s a classic hero. After working on projects about anti-heroes, like House of Cards, Agnieszka was attracted to showcasing a morally courageous person, especially given the times we find ourselves in. She felt, as do I, that the world needs more heroes. 

Agnieszka Holland: When reading Andrea’s script, I thought that I never heard about Jones, but actually his story was told in the Holodomor chapter of Snyder’s Bloodlands, so I had encountered him before. After, I learned more through access to Jones’ notebook, and the documentary his grandnephew shot about the circumstances of his death. 

Robin Lindley: Mr. Jones stands as a tribute to the dauntless Gareth Jones and also stresses the essential role of a free press in a democracy. Was that part of your intention in presenting this story at a time when an American president described members of the press as “enemies of the people”?

Andrea Chapula: I first got the idea in 2003 to pay tribute to my grandfather and all that he had survived in Ukraine under Stalin. I of course never envisioned the story itself being so timely, and still find that surreal. 

Agnieszka Holland: The questions about the role of the media, and the importance of fact checking and investigating honest journalism, were among the main reasons.  Democracy will not survive when media can be corrupted. 

Robin Lindley: What did you learn about Walter Duranty (played by Peter Sarsgaard), the Pulitzer Award-winning New York Times Moscow bureau chief who undermined Jones and refused to report on the famine? Why was he determined—with other Western reporters—to cover up for Stalin’s regime? And did he actually host lavish sex orgies?

Andrea Chapula: The more I dug into Duranty, the worse he seemed. Peter Sarsgaard delivers a sympathetic portrayal. The real Duranty, who had a child with his live-in housekeeper, left both the mother and their child behind when he left the Soviet Union. The hedonism seen in the film is inspired by the drunken orgies Duranty regularly attended in Moscow, including at a club called “Stable of Pegasus.” His biographer Sally Taylor describes this. Duranty shared a lover with the Satanist Aleister Crowley and participated in his black magic sex orgies in 1920s Paris. 

Agnieszka Holland: I mostly used Andrea’s research from her writing process, books, press articles, other journalists’ statements. We are unable to fully know his real intentions, but the presented facts are quite incontrovertible.

Robin Lindley: Who was Ada Brooks (played by Vanessa Kirby), the journalist who befriends and helps Jones get to Ukraine in the movie? Was her character based on a real person?

Andrea Chapula: Ada was invented and based on my own experiences having an awful editor when I first started working in journalism. It turns out there was a young woman, named Rhea Clyman, who worked for Duranty for a time and broke away from him to report the truth about the famine. There’s a documentary that just came out about her. We named a character Rhea Clyman to pay tribute to her. 

Robin Lindley: George Orwell also makes an appearance in the film. Did he and Jones actually meet and become friends? Did Orwell’s Animal Farm grow out of the stories by Jones and the events of the Ukrainian famine, as the film suggests?

 Andrea Chapula: Orwell came into the story inspired by the Ukrainian translation of Animal Farm produced by World War II refugees. It turns out that I have a copy thanks to my uncle who, when he was a kid, immigrated to the US with it from a European refugee camp. I wrote about this in my book Orwell and The Refugees: The Untold Story in Animal Farm. Here’s an overview of that story in a piece I wrote for The Atlantic. 

Orwell and Gareth Jones never met, as far as we know. They shared a literary agent and an independent spirit. They were both around the same age and idealistic. 

Robin Lindley: Filmmaking is a complex, collaborative process, and I appreciate the work both of you did to complete this pioneering work on Jones and the terrible famine. How did the technical making of the film evolve?

Andrea Chapula: Every film that gets made is a miracle. It seemed as though the entire project was about to fall apart and then suddenly, we found ourselves on set in Ukraine in the middle of a snow storm. It was a harrowing experience just to get the film made and finish it within budget and on schedule. This film especially needed a lot of miracles. 

Agnieszka Holland: Script, producers, director and most importantly, money. For this kind of difficult, ambitious, independent movie, the financing is the most difficult part of the story. Then the casting, and— last but not least—the creation of the movie itself. And then another difficult step: effective delivery to the audience. 

Robin Lindley: The cast of Mr. Jones is first rate. As a fan of Grantchester, I especially appreciated James Norton’s star turn as Gareth Jones. How did the casting process work?

Andrea Chapula: We originally cast another actor who then asked us to delay the project for about six months so he could do a TV series. We needed snow and to film that winter. So we had to scramble for another actor and our tenacious casting director Colin Jones found us James Norton who seemed born to play the role. 

Agnieszka Holland: This was a long process, as before our financing was closed, it was difficult to attract names. James came quite late to the game, but was immediately very enthusiastic. And he was the great trouper in this difficult adventure; creatively and humanely. 

Robin Lindley: The cinematography is striking, especially the muted scenes from famine-struck Ukraine. That remarkable transition in visual style was ingenious. I’ll always remember the glowing orange (in color) in the dark railroad cattle car. Can you talk about the decisions that go into cinematography on an epic film like Mr. Jones? I realize you’re a master Ms. Holland.

Andrea Chapula: The orange scene was taken from real life. Gareth Jones experienced that on a train headed into Ukraine. As for the colors and cinematography, that’s the genius of Agnieszka and our director of cinematography Tomasz Naumiuk. 

Agnieszka Holland: Thank you! We had a young, but very talented cinematographer, Tomasz Naumiuk, and we closely collaborated on making the detailed concept of the general visual style and the particular sequences. And then we were inspired by reality: weather, light, sets.

Robin Lindley: Where was Mr. Jones filmed? We’re you on location in Russia and Ukraine?

Agnieszka Holland: Ukraine, Poland, and Scotland. 

Robin Lindley: How have viewers responded to your film? The reviews seem very positive. Did you hear from Russian viewers? Was the film banned anywhere? Did you face any threats?

Andrea Chapula: The film received a huge reception in Ukraine, which was extremely gratifying. One Ukrainian journalist who interviewed me for around two hours had seen the film three times in one week when it premiered in Berlin, and sounded like she read every review and seemed to know the film as well as I did.

The reception in Ukraine was the most exciting part since this is their history that we want to help raise awareness of. We also received a lot of thoughtful questions from Russian journalists at the press conference for the film when it had its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival. These were of course independent journalists not affiliated with Russian state media. 

Agnieszka Holland: The film has had very good reception around the world, and especially in Ukraine. Unfortunately, it was not possible to sell this film to Russia, and most Russians today still believe the Stalinist version of the story.

Robin Lindley: The recent history of Ukraine is tumultuous, from the Chernobyl disaster and fall of the Soviet Union to the ongoing bitter conflict with Russia. The story of the Holodomor still seems resonant today.  How do you see the recent history of the Ukraine?

Andrea Chapula: Ukraine’s recent history is a cautionary tale of corruption as a human rights issue. As Biden told Ukraine’s parliament when he was Vice President: clean up your corruption the Kremlin weaponizes against you.

What’s important to know as well is that Ukraine’s 2013-2014 Revolution of Dignity -- EuroMaidan -- was driven by people from all walks of life in Ukraine who want to live in a more European society, away from Moscow’s orbit. Many people I interviewed in regards to the revolution told me that Moscow’s oppressive history plays a role in Ukrainians wanting to break free and join Europe. 

Agnieszka Holland: The political and economic situation in Ukraine is extremely difficult. The Donbas war never ended. The division of the country, the corruption, incompetent politicians, the “free world” which doesn’t pay any real attention to real Ukrainian challenges…these all add to the difficulties. But in creating this film, I met countless strong, motivated, educated young people in Ukraine that give me hope, and the Ukrainian identity becomes stronger every year.

Robin Lindley: Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine led to his first impeachment. How do you see the Trump-Putin relationship and its effect on Ukraine?

Andrea Chapula: Donald Trump admires and looks up to dictators like Putin, because he wants to be one. I have a podcast that examines the threat of authoritarianism in the U.S. and around the world called Gaslit Nation. It regularly covers this topic. After the horrific quid pro quo pressure campaign Trump put Ukraine through, it must be a huge relief for Ukraine to now have a Biden administration. Biden was and remains a staunch supporter of Ukraine. So the next few years should have a positive impact on Ukraine in terms of getting the support they need from the U.S. to resist Putin’s ongoing invasion and confront corruption through civil society programs from a rebuilt and robust State Department. 

Robin Lindley: Stalin was a master of keeping the story of the Holodomor from the outside world. Is Russia under Putin doing the same thing now in regard to stories out of Ukraine and other issues?

Andrea Chapula: Under Putin, Stalin has been resurrected as a hero. There’s a heartbreaking story of Yuri Dmitriev, a historian who nearly had his life destroyed after uncovering Stalin-era mass graves. Russia’s official state Twitter accounts sometimes like to muddle the truth about the famine. 

Agnieszka Holland: The attempt to kill Navalny and several political murders orchestrated by Putin, show the real nature of today’s Russia. Russia intervenes in free elections and political life in many free countries, USA included. I don’t have illusions about Putin’s intentions. Read Dostoyevsky’s Demons. It is again very relevant book.

Robin Lindley: What do you hope viewers take from your film?

Andrea Chapula: I hope Mr. Jones inspires people to learn more about the famine and read books like Anne Applebaum’s Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine and Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder. When I watch historical dramas, I always want to know what was real and what was poetic license. As one reviewer wrote of Mr. Jones, the stranger elements of the film tend to be true. 

Agnieszka Holland: Some understanding of the world and its hidden tragedies; the respect for free journalism and the courage of individual reporters; and the knowledge that when the media are corrupted, and the political class is cowardly, lazy and opportunist, and the society is indifferent—the scene is set for evil to arise and take root.

Robin Lindley: What are your next projects? Will you be doing more on Ukraine and its history?

Andrea Chapula: I’m working on a script inspired by my father-in-law who led a student uprising in 1956 Romania in solidarity with the Hungarian Uprising next door. I like to write stories about individuals taking great risks against authoritarian systems. Given my family’s own history, those are the stories I’m attracted to. 

Agnieszka Holland: After Mr. Jones, I directed another film, dealing with the real historical figure, Charlatan, which premiered at Berlinale 2020 and was presented to international Oscars category as a Czech entry. And I am observing closely the reality, waiting for the new inspiration and the output of different processes. 

Robin Lindley: We’re now living at a time of a deadly global pandemic and democracy under threat in many nations. And you’ve explored one of the darkest moments in human history. What gives you hope at this challenging time?

Andrea Chapula: From my years of research into dark chapters of human history, I’ve learned to look at moments like the one we’re currently living in as times of moral courage. Heroes always emerge. There is fierce resistance, because most people are decent and committed to staying human. I have tremendous faith in people and believe that we’re ultimately going to evolve from this dark time that we’re in. 

Robin Lindley: Is there anything you’d like to add about the film, the famine, Ukraine, or anything else?

Andrea Chapula: History is healing. The more we learn of our history, the easier time we have understanding the issues we’re currently dealing with in the world and how to navigate them. The nation that knows its past protects its future.