Interwar · Film · 2019
Mr. Jones
A young Welsh journalist who has already interviewed Hitler goes to Moscow to ask how Stalin pays for his boom, and slips away to see Soviet Ukraine for himself.
Where it happened
Follow the story across 4 places.
Stop 1: London
Fresh from interviewing Hitler, Jones warns Lloyd George's circle about Germany and wonders how Stalin can afford his factories.
Stop 2: Moscow
Among the foreign press corps, Jones gets parties, cryptic hints and a warning that journalists may not leave Moscow.
Stop 3: Stalino (Hughesovka), Soviet Ukraine
Key location
Slipping off his escorted train, Jones walks through snowbound villages around the Welsh-founded mining town where his mother once lived.
Stop 4: London
Back home, Jones tries to tell the truth against denials from Moscow and from the most famous correspondent in the West.
What really happened
Gareth Jones was a real Welsh journalist and former adviser to David Lloyd George. In March 1933 he left an official trip and walked through villages in Soviet Ukraine, where forced collectivisation and grain requisitions had caused the famine now known as the Holodomor; an estimated 3.5 to 5 million people died there in 1932-1933. His reports were published at the end of March 1933.
Walter Duranty of The New York Times, a Pulitzer winner, publicly dismissed Jones's account, and the Soviet Union denied any famine. The film invents some characters, such as the reporter Ada Brooks, and uses George Orwell as a framing device although there is no evidence the two met. Jones was murdered in 1935 while travelling in Inner Mongolia, then under Japanese influence.
Where to watch
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Full details
- Original title
- Mr. Jones
- Directed by
- Agnieszka Holland
- Countries
- Poland, Ukraine, United Kingdom
- Languages
- English, Russian, Ukrainian
- Released
- 2019
- Period
- –
- Theaters of war
- Eastern Front, Western Europe
- Themes
- True story
- Biography
- Politics
