Babi Yar. Context

Loznitsa has assembled a wrenching and revelatory collage.

Loznitsa creates a fascinating and quietly devastating chronicle of invasion, occupation and slaughter. As ever, the Ukrainian director doesn’t labour his film with voiceover or overt authorial steers. Yet this is close to home, and it’s impossible not to feel that he’s holding his country to account; for while this was a Nazi extermination, it came with a degree of collusion.

Sergei Loznitsa continues to mine the archives for what amount to living documents of a past that, as is all too clear, reverberate into the present with devastating force.

Babi Yar. Context has power but falls short of the director’s greatest works, largely because his span here is considerably longer, and in consequence the focus suffers.

The dual nature of “Babi Yar. Context” as both an essay movie and a cut-up historic document might create an uneasy tension with viewers who would like to know more about whatever they’re looking at. If nothing else, Loznitsa succeeds at being upsetting.