A vast majority of innocent men and women taken to soviet labor camps during the Stalin era from 1924 to 1953 still remain in unmarked graves in the frozen Siberian tundra, a silent and unnoticed testament to the horrors of the Gulag.
This extraordinary film by Zoltan Szalkai introduces numerous labor camps of the Kolyma region of northeastern Siberia. 50 years after Stalin’s death. The filmmaker follows the narrative from the book Lost Years by Hungarian author George Z. Bien.
George Bien was a 16-year-old student in Budapest when he was wrongfully arrested and sentenced in 1945 by the Soviets to 10 years imprisonment in Kolyma. Prior to this recently published film, the subject of the Gulag was covered predominantly by archival material.
Zoltan Szalkai brings the Gulag to life by filming on the land of those labor camps as they appear today. This film refutes all those who say the Gulag never existed.
DVD-R Runtime: 53 min Hungarian with English Subtitles. | 