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Saturday, September 12, 2020

MR JONES FOR M-NET


(James Norton stars as Gareth Jones)

M-Net Channel 101 will screen the movie Mr Jones tomorrow (September 13, 2020) at 23h10. Mr Jones is a 2019 biographical thriller film directed by Agnieszka Holland based on true events. A Welsh journalist breaks the news in the western media about the Holodomor, the man-made famine in Ukraine in which millions died in the early 1930s.

Starring James Norton as Gareth Jones with Vanessa Kirby as Ada Brooks and Peter Sarsgaard as Walter Duranty, it was selected to compete for the Golden Bear at the 69th Berlin International Film Festival.

In 1933, Gareth Jones is an ambitious young journalist who has gained some renown for his interview with Adolf Hitler. Thanks to his connections to Lloyd George, the former British Prime Minister, he is able to get official permission to travel to the Soviet Union. Jones intends to try to interview Stalin and to find out more about the Soviet Union's economic expansion and its apparently-successful five-year development plan.

Jones is restricted to Moscow but jumps his train and travels unofficially to Ukraine to discover evidence of the Holodomor, including empty villages, starving people, cannibalism and the enforced collection of grain. On his return to Britain, he struggles to get his story taken seriously. The film ends by recording that Jones died in Mongolia on a return visit to the Soviet Union and did not know that his guide was employed by the Soviet secret service.