An English-language version of the documentary “The Murder of Gongadze: 20 Years of Searching for the Truth” is being released for World Press Freedom Day on May 3.
The film by Ukrainian journalists Nataliya Gumenyuk, Maxim Kamenev, and Anna Tsyhyma tells the story of the murder of Georgiy Gongadze, a political journalist and co-founder of one of the country’s first and most influential online publications, Ukrainska Pravda.
For more information, read the Kyiv Post’s coverage of the Georgiy Gongadze murder.
“In 2021, World Press Freedom Day is devoted to cherishing information as a public good. The attacks on journalists who work to keep those in power accountable, informing their society, are attacks on the public good. Yet what we saw is that unsolved crimes against journalists and the void and impunity they leave in the public sphere lead to a broken justice system where justice cannot be found,” says co-author and producer of the documentary, Nataliya Gumenyuk. “This movie is, for anybody who wants to understand why Ukraine is what it is now, but it is also universal as it explains why journalism matters. Yet on this day, I do not just want to be pessimistic. Whilst the justice system continued to fail, it was Ukrainian journalists themselves who shone the light on this case and made a cover-up impossible. So while this is a tragedy, it is also a story of resilience and why lessons of the past matter.”
Maxim Kamenev, whose idea it was to make the film, said: “The story of the murder of Georgiy Gongadze provides an understanding of the context in which the current generation of Ukrainians was formed, their distrust of the government, and the formation of the civil society that journalists were part of. It was active citizens who actually forced the authorities to punish the journalist’s killer.”
More than 20 years have passed since the abduction and murder of Georgiy Gongadze on Sept. 16, 2000. However, Ukrainian society has not yet received the final answer to the question: “Who is to blame for the murder of the journalist?”
The nation learned exactly how the journalist was killed, who the direct perpetrators were. They even were sentenced. However, there is still no answer as to what the role of the second President of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma was.
The absence of a clear answer is the reason why the main protagonists of the movie “The Murder of Gongadze: 20 Years of Searching for the Truth” – Ukrainian journalists and friends and colleagues of Georgiy – are reevaluating the events of that time, as well the role of the key participants, who remain top players in Ukrainian politics.
Watch the documentary “The Murder of Gongadze: 20 Years of Search for the Truth,” now available in English.
