In an age when disinformation muddles the truth, a newly discovered voice cuts through the historical haze. She is Rhea Clyman, a young Canadian reporter who traversed the starving Soviet heartland when Stalin’s man made famine was just beginning in Ukraine. Clyman’s newly discovered newspaper articles for Toronto and London newspapers in 1932 show her remarkable resourcefulness and courage. After she was banished from the USSR for writing about the Holodomor and the Gulag, this brave woman went on to cover Hitler’s early lethal years in power.
The feature length documentary interweaves Clyman’s truth telling trip in the 1930’s with today’s conflict in eastern Ukraine. Three years into Ukraine’s forgotten war, its soldiers are still dying in trenches and held as prisoners of war. In central Ukraine two little girls are growing up without their dad Serhiy Hlondar. He’s a member of Ukraine’s Special Forces who was captured in the battle of Debaltseve, a day after Russian led forces were meant to silence their guns in the Minsk 2 Peace Accord. Hlondar has never seen his youngest daughter, and after 1100 days of captivity his family has only a handful of letters to keep their hopes alive.
