Finding Babel

Name: Finding Babel
Genre: Animation, Documentary

France, Russia, Ukraine · 2015
1h 28m
Director David Novack
Starring Liev Schreiber, Marina Vlady, Stéphanie Campion, David Coburn
Genre Animation, Documentary

The subversive masterpieces of Russian-Ukrainian writer Isaac Babel challenged the reality of life under rising totalitarianism, and led to his arrest and execution in 1940. “Finding Babel” confronts complex traces of a turbulent history in the conflicts between Ukraine and Russia. Babel's fiction is woven into the film with ethereal and fantastical animation.

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What are critics saying?

Village Voice by Alan Scherstuhl

This lit-doc travelogue gains in power, insight, and urgency as it journeys.

The New York Times by Ben Kenigsberg

In what probably qualifies as both an accomplishment and a shortcoming, the movie makes you want to read Babel’s writing instead.

The Hollywood Reporter by Frank Scheck

The film serves as a concise biographical portrait and an excellent introduction to the writer's works.

Los Angeles Times by Robert Abele

When it’s merely a guided tour marked by sites and talking historians, Finding Babel can feel a little color-by-numbers. (Which may explain the Schreiber-read interludes.) But there are excursions that feel invigorating.