WASHINGTON, D.C. — Agnieszka Holland’s award-winning “MR. JONES”, a journalistic thriller exposing the Kremlin’s propaganda machine, starring James Norton, Vanessa Kirby, and Peter Sarsgaard, will be screened for the public on the side of the Russian Embassy Press Office in Washington, DC (1706 18th St. NW, Washington, DC) on Saturday August 6 at sundown. The event will begin with a live-streamed discussion featuring Holland.
A Moscow screening of Mr. Jones made worldwide headlines last fall when it was disrupted by masked men and later local authorities. Shortly after, the renowned Russian human rights group that organized the screening, Memorial, was shut down after facing years of political repression.
“MR. JONES” is based on the real life Welsh journalist Gareth Jones, and his courageous eye-witness reporting of the Holodomor, Stalin’s 1933 genocide famine in Ukraine. The screening is part of a broader effort to show support for Ukrainians during Russia’s invasion. Previous events by the organizers include planting sunflowers outside of the Russian Embassy as well as projecting the Ukrainian flag onto the embassy.
“In the 1930s, Stalin killed millions in Ukraine with a genocidal famine and tried to erase these crimes by lying to the world and manipulating the press into promulgating those lies worldwide,” said Benjamin Wittes who organized the screening as part of a string of guerrilla actions around Russian diplomatic facilities in Washington, DC. “Today, we are seeing Russia engage in a similarly murderous campaign against Ukrainian nationhood, and the embassy press operation is part of Russia’s apparatus of lying about history and erasing the truth. So we are going to the press office in an effort to bring history and the present together with a truly remarkable film that vividly reminds us of what’s at stake in Ukraine.”
MR. JONES has chilling parallels to today’s war. As Russia carries out what many experts argue is a genocide against Ukrainians, Russia’s invasion has distrupted grain shipments from Ukraine, risking famine for millions of people across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. The August 6 screening is open to the public and will open with a livestreamed Q&A featuring Agnieszka Holland (EUROPA, EUROPA, IN DARKNESS, CHARLATAN) and screenwriter-producer Andrea Chalupa. The film will not be available to watch by livestream given the nature of the event, and audiences are encouraged to stream the film ahead of time on demand and digital.
“Mr Jones”/ West End Films
