Tidings of Job

On a flatbed train, the soldiers survey their stock -- a pile of emaciated bodies, hundreds of men, dead or near dead -- and begin their work. With brute efficiency they toss the bodies into a deep, burning pit. Down the hill the bodies roll, toward incineration. They don't slide with the burly grace of stunt men; they topple clumsily, bumping into one another, robbed of dignity even in their dying. For agonizing minutes the carnage continues, until the soldiers' job is done and the pit smolders with an almost visible stench.

This is the climactic scene of Oles Yanchuk's Famine-33,...