THE TARAS FAMILY
80 Years after WWII
THE TARAS FAMILY was the very first fiction film world-wide to treat the annihilation of Jewish people in the Second World War. The story revolves around the members of the Yatsenko family, who seek to prevent the reopening of a weapons factory by the Nazis, as part of a sabotage unit. Taras Yatsenko becomes a witness to a massacre of Kyiv's Jewish population, which director Mark Donskoy stages at the original location in Babyn Yar. Though his use of hand-held camera and quick cuts was once criticised as "sloppy", it is precisely these stylistic choices that lend his depiction of the horrific events a sense of deeply unsettling authenticity.
THE TARAS FAMILY was the very first fiction film world-wide to treat the annihilation of Jewish people in the Second World War. The story revolves around the members of the Yatsenko family, who seek to prevent the reopening of a weapons factory by the Nazis, as part of a sabotage unit. Taras Yatsenko becomes a witness to a massacre of Kyiv's Jewish population, which director Mark Donskoy stages at the original location in Babyn Yar. Though his use of hand-held camera and quick cuts was once criticised as "sloppy", it is precisely these stylistic choices that lend his depiction of the horrific events a sense of deeply unsettling authenticity.
