Gulag 113

The latest production from Realworld Pictures, Gulag 113 follows 89-year old Estonian-Canadian Eduard Kolga, a survivor of the Soviet GULAG system, as he journeys from his home in Canada to revisit key locations from the horrifying ordeal he and millions of other Eastern Europeans experienced more than 60 years ago.

Kolga’s story of toil and starvation at the hands of the Red Army is all too familiar within the many communities -- Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians Poles, Ukrainians and Finns – who similarly suffered in Soviet labour camps during World War II, but is largely unknown in the West.

“In approaching my grandfather to recall difficult memories and retrace grueling steps, I aimed not only to raise awareness of Stalin’s brutality but to humanize the ‘statistics’ his regime saw simply as a consequence of war,” says Marcus Kolga, Producer of Gulag 113. “I am grateful for the support of OMNI’s Independent Producers’ Initiative for enabling me to do so.”

“Revealing the untold stories of ethnocultural Canadians, whether those tales are positive or negative, and introducing them to new audiences is one of the key reasons why the OMNI Television Independent Producers Initiative exists,” echoes Malcolm Dunlop, Vice President, Programming and Marketing for Rogers Media: Television.

In addition to powerful images captured on location in Estonia and Russia, Gulag 113 offers rarely seen historical battle footage and an interview with Pulitzer Prize winning author, Anne Applebaum.