The Slavic and East European Film Series and the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies proudly present:

The Unvanquished (Непокоренные)

Remarkably, The Unvanquished was not just the first Soviet film that portrayed mass murder of Jewish people—it was one of the first Holocaust films worldwide. It remains one of the rare films that portray the “Holocaust by bullets,” the mass executions that killed millions of Soviet Jews even before the death camps. The execution scene was filmed on location, in Babii Yar in Kiev, a place which came to symbolize the Holocaust in the Soviet Union. But The Unvanquished also introduced a number of motifs that we will see in later international films: a hidden Jewish child, the character of a righteous gentile, and a tragic procession of Jews marched towards their death.

A rare chance to see a forgotten film, newly subtitled by the Toronto Jewish Film Festival.

This film will be introduced by Olga Gershenson, Professor of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and author of The Phantom Holocaust: Soviet Cinema and Jewish Catastrophe (2013). Professor Gershenson will also lead a Q&A after the film screening.

Harriman Institute Atrium (12th floor, International Affairs Building)

For more information, please contact: Eliza Rose (ecr2145@columbia.edu) or Sophie Pinkham (scp2131@columbia.edu)