A project on naming a lane in Shevchenkivsky district (Kyiv) in honor of Gareth Jones has been put up for public discussion.
To support the project, you only have to fill out a simple registration form on Kyiv City State Administration website and vote for respective decision found at this link.
Public discussion will last until May 19, 2019, inclusive; afterward, a session of Kyiv naming commission members will take place, and a decision will be made according to public voting results. Then the project will be passed to the city council session.
It is highly symbolic that a lane to be named in honor of Gareth Jones is located not far from Institute of Journalism, which has actively supported this initiative. Naming the lane is among essential steps within a wide-scale social raising awareness project to popularize and honor Gareth Jones, a journalist who made a significant contribution to spreading the truth about the Famine of 1932-33.
‘Mr. Jones’ is a real untold story of a young Welsh journalist Gareth Jones who, in 1933, traveled to the Soviet Union to expose the truth about the crimes of the Stalinist regime and the Holodomor (man-made famine) in Ukraine and to make the world aware of that. He saw the famine with his own eyes and spoke out against it without hesitation. But the world turned a deaf ear because Western politicians were reluctant to recognize and confront this inconvenient story, and the highly-regarded media failed to support him in his crusade to expose the truth, continuing to publish alternative news conceived in Moscow. What first seemed a routine journalist investigation quickly turned into a mortally dangerous endeavor, and its revelations laid the foundation for George Orwell’s famous allegorical novel, ‘Animal Farm’.
The film’s director is Agnieszka Holland, head of the European Film Academy, Academy Award and BAFTA nominee, winner of the 2017 Berlinale Golden Bear. The lead roles in the film were played by James Norton (‘War and Peace’, ‘Happy Valley’, ‘McMafia’), Vanessa Kirby (‘The Crown’, ‘Mission: Impossible - Fallout’, ‘Hobbs and Shaw’), and Peter Sarsgaard (‘Jackie’, ‘The Magnificent Seven’, ‘An Education’). Joseph Mawle (‘Game of Thrones’) and Kenneth Cranham (‘Maleficent’, ‘Valkyrie’) also joined the cast along with Ukrainian actors Yakiv Tkachenko (‘The Strayed’), Oleh Drach (‘Battle for Sevastopol’, ‘A Prayer for Hetman Mazepa’), Volodymyr Fedoruk, Anna Shaidiuk, Anastasia Chala and Alina Kovalska.
‘Mr. Jones’ is a co-production of Poland (Film Produkcja with the support of Polish Film Institute), Ukraine (Kinorob with the support of Ukrainian State Film Agency) and the United Kingdom (Jones Boy Films). Filming took place in Ukraine, Poland, and Scotland.
The film’s marketing campaign in Ukraine has already begun, and it is based on a large-scale social and educational project of FILM.UA Group with the support of ‘Ukraina’ TV channel, general media partner. The campaign’s purpose is to popularize Gareth Jones’ personality in Ukraine and the world and to preserve the memory of 1932-1933 Holodomor in Ukraine.
Coming to theaters in Ukraine and worldwide this fall, 2019. MMD UA Company is a distributor in Ukraine.
