“Isaac Babel brought the truth to millions, but the truth cost him everything!”

Synopsis:
Isaac Babel’s writings are subversive masterpieces, challenging the ideology of the early Soviet Union,
and resulting in his arrest and execution in 1940. On the 75th anniversary of Isaac Babel’s execution,
Finding Babel follows Andrei Malaev-Babel, his grandson, on a journey to come closer to some sense of
truth. Hoping to better understand Babel’s powerful artistic method and elusive persona, Andrei journeys
through Ukraine, France and Russia; locations deeply tied to the story of his grandfather. He confronts
lingering traces of a turbulent history that echo in Babel’s writing and in the conflicts and climate of today’s
Ukraine and Russia. ! !
With each stop, Andrei gets closer to the complex stories that Babel wrote with depth and hidden
meaning. Ultimately, through powerful interviews and a painful examination of Babel’s NKVD file, Andrei
engages with his grandfather’s arrest, torture and execution. Babel’s life story and his fiction are woven
into Andrei’s search with ethereal animation that puts viewers, like Babel’s readers, somewhere between
reality and fantasy.