Red Secrets - Im Fadenkreuz Stalins

... innocent comrades, as a result of tyrannical, incompetent and blinkered beliefs, in a system that still exists today bizarrely in some parts of the world. The famine of 1930s Russia and the man who bravely revealed those secrets presented in a down to earth and informative way with minimal poetic licence.

All the terror, horror and atrocities of the war and its effects on Ukraine, the Holodomor (Famine of Terror or the Great Famine), including empty villages, starving people, cannibalism and the forced harvest of grain, a beautiful but belated homage to the Lord Gareth Jones (journalist), very sad, appropriate for the current war Russia x Ukraine, a real story, Portraits of War, told simply and efficiently, as he wanted and reports at the beginning of the film...

This story is very engaging. The scenes of famine do etch onto the viewers' brains. I feel very sad for the fate of a righteous whistleblower.

I knew nothing about Gareth Jones or Duranty before this and thought it an excellent film. James Norton is as good as ever and the rest of the cast are excellent.

Superb filming of a terrible time in the development of communist USSR and the conditions that the peasant class had to endure. A must see if you're interested in history but don't expect any laughs or edge of the seat thrills.

Saw this at Berlinale and was impressed. Agnieszka Holland created a strong historical drama, employing artistical license here an there. But the main points (different from what user-973-741969 claims in his review) are true. Blasphemy it is only to those who still worship Stalin. The movie follows political advisor/journalist Gareth Jones. After losing his job with the british foreign secretary in London he tries to reeignite his career through an interview with Stalin. And why not since he already interviewed Hitler and Goebbels (where the movie lazily unterplays his admiration for the pre-war-Nazis. Sadly Jones didn´t live to see their downfall and could never reevaluate his naivety). In Moscow, Jones contacts NYT-Reporter Duranty, who is well connected an a staunch supporter of Stalin. Jones doesnt make it to the Soviet Leader but can board a train south to inspect the industrialisation of the Soviet Union. But he escapes the agents that accompany him and travels on his own through Ukraine to witness the Holodomor, a famine that cost millions of lives as a result of Stalins communist reshaping of agriculture in 1933 and was until then mostly unheard of outside of the USSR - and even in the SU. Back in the west Jones has a hard time to prove his allegations. His camera was taken, Duranty, who has a much better reputation calls him a liar and even the british government doesn´t want to risk the lucrative economic relations with the USSR. Holland focuses only partly on the famine and more on the role of stalinist propaganda and the gullability of western media and politics, that swept this catastrophe under the rug for decades. It´s a thrilling movie that doesn´t have the budget to show millions of dead and instead focuses on intimate an gruesome details. The luxury of the elites (western & russian) in Moscow are in stark contrast to the suffering of the peasants. "Mr Jones" brings us to the beginning of worldwide propaganda and fake news strategies where a journalists live is cheap and the people are just pawns in hands of big powers.