'Hunger for Truth' shows the power of truth telling in the face of disinformation. The feature length documentary tells the story of Rhea Clyman, a young Canadian reporter who traversed the starving Soviet heartland when Stalin's man made famine was ravaging Ukraine. The film interweaves Clyman's truth telling trip during the 1930's with today's conflict in eastern Ukraine, focusing on a forgotten prisoner of war.
HUNGER FOR TRUTH (2020) - directed by Andrew Tkach
At a time when facts and inconvenient truths are under attack, the film Hunger for Truth gives voice to every brave journalist who has ever spoken truth to power. Raised in a poor immigrant family in Toronto, Rhea Clyman lost her leg in a tragic accident and worked in a factory from the age of 11, but somehow, she managed to fulfill her dream of becoming an international reporter. Dozens of Clyman's newly discovered articles were printed in British and Canadian newspapers, when dictators like Hitler and Stalin sought to cover up their atrocities. Traveling to the Soviet Union in the early 1930's, as a believer in communism, Clyman ditched her preconceptions when faced with facts on the ground. She risked her life to traverse the starving Ukrainian heartland in 1932, then ravaged by Stalin's state-sponsored famine. Clyman was one of a handful of reporters who honestly described this hidden atrocity where millions starved in silence. Expelled from the U.S.S.R. for investigating Arctic prisons camps and the horrors of collectivization, this brave reporter went on to cover the rise of the Nazis in Germany, despite her Jewish background. But Clyman's biography is not just an amazing history lesson. The feature length documentary juxtaposes Clyman's journey in in the 1930's in eastern Ukraine, with today's forgotten war in the same region, waged by President Putin and his Russian proxies. The film follows the five-year struggle of a Ukrainian P.O.W's family to win his release, and ends with the dramatic conclusion of their story.
