Spielberg to Make a Film in Ukraine

The Oscar-winning US movie director Steven Spielberg is going to make a documentary about Ukraine, which will be co-produced with People’s Deputy Viktor Pinchuk, a well-known Ukrainian businessman and art patron, Interfax-Ukraine reports.

Mr. Pinchuk says he met Spielberg several times in the US and they made a deal for the director to shoot a film on the Babyn Yar tragedy. Spielberg has already set the ball rolling in Los Angeles, while his assistants are gathering material in Kyiv. In late September — early October 1941 the Nazis shot more than 30,000 Jews in Kyiv’s Babyn Yar area. For two years the Yar (“ravine”) was the site of mass-scale executions that claimed over 150,000 people of various ethnic origins. The Jewish theme is nothing new for Spielberg. The director was awarded an Oscar for the film Schindler’s List, about a German who rescued Jews from death camps during the Second World War. Mr. Pinchuk announced that the new movie would be released in eighteen months. The tycoon has committed himself to fund the film production, but he refused to answer any questions about the exact cost of this project. Mr. Pinchuk also said he would not be running for a seat in parliament in 2006 “if the new leadership doesn’t harass big business.” He is not going to work in the new cabinet and is also prepared to accept the re-privatization of the Kryvorizhstal steel mill — on one condition: “If it is going to be a law-abiding action, not a political show.”