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Finding Babel

...Perhaps the best proof of the relevance of historical dramas was David Novack's Finding Babel.

Pravda
  • Archive - Festival 32
  • Director: David Novack
  • USA, Ukraine, Russia, France 2016
  • 89 minutes
  • English, Russian
  • Subtitles in Hebrew, English

Isaac Babel was a Soviet journalist, playwright, literary translator, and short-story writer. 75 years after his wrongful execution, his grandson comes closer to the elusive truths of his heritage.
In Finding Babel, Andrei Malaev-Babel confronts lingering traces of a turbulent history that echo in his grandfather's subversive writing and in the conflicts and climate of today’s Ukraine and Russia. Babel’s life story and his fiction are woven into Andrei’s search with ethereal animation that puts viewers, like Babel’s readers, somewhere between fantasy and reality.
Filmography: Burning the Future: Coal in America (doc, 2008).

The filmmakers will be attending the screening on October 20th.


  • Director David Novack
  • Production David Novack, Alexis Zoullas
  • Script Andrei Malaev-Babel, David Novack, Kris Liem
  • Cinematography James Scott Shelley, Samuel Henriques
  • Editing Kris Liem, Dylan Hansen-Fliedner, David Novack
  • Music Ljova Zhurbin
  • Festivals Seattle, Moscow Jewish (Special Jury Prize), Black Nights
  • Voices Liev Schreiber
  • Source Odessa Films, Inc., New York / Worldwide distributor: Seventh Art Releasing, Los Angeles

Finding Babel