This documentary consists solely of restored footage of the lives of Soviet Ukrainians during World War II from June 1941 to December 1952. While illustrating the times before and after the massacre at the Babi Yar ravine where more than 33,000 Jews were slaughtered, Loznitsa does not simply focus on events but on human actions. From the testimonies of low-ranking soldiers who were given orders to kill and that of women who survived by climbing their way out of the heaps of corpses to the ways Nazis are punished after the final trial, this film relentlessly investigates the massacre and exposes the uncomfortable barbarism that is innately human. He shows indescribable cruelty through seemingly unending images because all of the atrocities shown were perpetrated by humans who never stopped to question such brutality. [Sung MOON]