Excellent. If there is a scintilla of truth to it, it shows that The New York Times has not only been a fake news organization for nearly 100 years, but that they were absolutely complicit with Joseph Stalin's dictatorship over the country and the organized famine in the Ukraine in the 1930s that killed millions.

About how Welsh Journalist Gareth Jones uncovered the truth about the murderous regime in the Soviet Union, and how the NY Times and Walter Duranty, the NY Times "Our Man in Moscow" correspondent, lied about it, and were paid and kept in opulence by Stalin in return for printing false glamorous reports about Uncle Joe in the US. Duranty won a pulitzer prize for his false reporting that was never revoked when the lies were revealed.

Definitely worth watching.

Thanks. Added to my watchlist.

I paid the $14.99 and watched this on Pay per View yesterday. Extremely well done, but (spoiler alert) it's very, very depressing. I've never seen the starvation inflicted by Stalin in Ukraine portrayed before, which I guess shows that the New York Times and other MSM around today hasn't changed a bit since these people were murdered by the millions in the 1930's. This, along with HBO's series "Chernobyl", "Animal Farm" (which Orwell was inspired to write after hearing Jone's description of what was happening in Ukraine) needs to be required reading in our high schools.

Absolutely worth viewing!!!! Thank you for posting this!!!

I paid the $14.99, too. It was $14.99 well spent.

The extent NYT's "Man in Moscow" Walter Duranty went to to glorify Joseph Stalin and deny the Ukraine genocide is one of the 20th century's great undertold stories. Stalin kept him in opulence, and armpit deep in gay orgies, to get Duranty to lie to the west about how Stalin was changing the USSR for the good.

Duranty won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on Stalin. That prize was never revoked when the full extent of lies Duranty printed were discovered. Moreover, the NYT never recanted its articles even when they were proven to be lies.

Gareth Jones went on to get assassinated by Soviet NKVD agents in Mongolia in 1935, while lying Duranty lived well into the 1950s.

This was an excellent film about a topic still relatively unknown to people in the West.

Agnieszka Holland is Polish, with a number of fine historical films to her credit.

I've not seen the famine portrayed on film before. I'm sure it was more horrific that the film could portray but in the film we get a taste (no pun intended).

There were plenty of Communists and Communist-sympathizers in the US at that time, including in Government, Academia and the press. Not so unlike today.

Bumping this older thread.

A couple days ago Dennis Prager mentioned this being a good film and, not realizing it had already been discussed on the forum, was about to post when I found this thread.

I found a copy of this movie at the local library and gave it a watch. From a film perspective it relies heavily on CGI, and the movie is fast-paced in places and feels a bit too rushed, I suspect probably due to a low budget... but the acting is well done and this little known story of how Walter Duranty and the New York Times intentionally ignored and covered up Stalin's starvation of the Ukrainians in The Holomodor is well worth learning about.

Mr. Jones, a young foreign affairs advisor wiz kid to British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, had interviewed Hitler on a flight along with Goebbels and, based on that and his impressions, advised the George cabinet that Hitler was a serious threat and that WW II had already begun, even before Germany had invaded Poland, although his predictions were scoffed at. He also predicted that, for Hitler and the third Reich to be stopped, the Soviets would be needed in order to open a second front during the war. But he questioned whether, under Stalin and Communism, they were even capable of providing the war effort needed for a second front, which caused him to want to learn more about how the Soviets were able to spend exorbitant amounts of money on new industries and modernization programs they were claiming to have built, during a global economic depression and all while the ruble was virtually worthless.

Becoming a journalist and traveling to Russia, he saw both the severe restrictions that reporters were kept under, and also the lavish alcohol/ drug/ sex party lifestyle that New York Time's reporter Walter Duranty hosted (and was allowed by Stalin) in order to keep most world journalists from reporting on Stalin's failed reforms.

Mr. Jones illegally travelled outside Moscow to Ukraine, and discovered the truth of widespread starvation with millions dead, and witnessed the lies of the Soviet regime firsthand. He was first blackmailed into staying silent, and when he later reported on what he saw, there was a smear campaign levelled at him to discredit his reporting.

As mentioned previously, Mr. Jones' reporting of this story served as the inspiration for George Orwell's Animal Farm, and you briefly see Orwell in a few places in the movie.

There is some brief nudity/ sex early in the movie along with drug use and some disturbing content later, so it isn't appropriate for children, but despite it's few flaws mentioned earlier, I'd suggest this movie for both the little known story as well as the history.



https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-o7VoM1jlOs