Women of the Gulag: Movie Screening and Discussion with Director Marianna Yarovskaya

Women of the Gulag, directed by Marianna Yarovskaya and based on a book by historian Paul Gregory, was short-listed in the best documentary category in the 2018 Academy Awards competition and has screened across 50+ American university campuses to wide acclaim.

The film follows the life stories of several women, now in their late 80s and early 90s, who survived the Gulag and features interviews with these women, whose voices and stories are interwoven with family photographs, documentary sequences from the 1930s, and shots of contemporary scenes. The stories are arranged to tell about two generations, the women and their parents, and to follow the path from arrest to prison, interrogations, transport, and life in camps and special settlements.

Marianna Yarovskaya is an award-winning Russian-American documentary filmmaker. In 1998 Marianna directed and produced Undesirables, which won a Student Academy Award (Student Oscar) and screened at Cannes. Since 2000 she has worked for Discovery Channel, National Geographic, History Channel, and Greenpeace as Producer and Senior Editor. In 2006 she was Head of Research on An Inconvenient Truth, which won an Academy Award. Her last project, Holy Warriors, a study of soldiers who found religion, has played in 35 countries worldwide and won numerous awards. Marianna is also a finalist for a 2010 China-US Fulbright fellowship to do research for her latest project.

Co-sponsored by the University of Rochester Russian Studies Program and the Skalny Center for Polish and Central European Studies.