Oscar-winning director  and 'Leviathan' producer team up for pre-Holocaust doc

Russian producer Alexander Rodnyansky (Loveless, Leviathan) is teaming up with Oscar-winning director Kevin Macdonald to make a documentary focused on the little known pre-Holocaust refugee crisis that took place in 1938.

The project will be produced by Rodnyansky's new company, AR Content, launched earlier this year to focus on films devoted to today's most urgent issues that will be directed by leading filmmakers.

Rodnyansky, Macdonald and Rosanne Korenberg will produce the yet untitled documentary, while the director is to be announced later, the Hollowood Reporter says.

Macdonald won the best documentary feature Oscar in 2000 for One Day In September, a film that chronicles a Palestinian terrorist group's attack on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympic Games in Munich.

Rodnyansky is primarily known as the producer of Andrei Zvyagintsev's Oscar-nominated features Leviathan and Loveless.

His other producer credits include Billy Bob Thornton's Jayne Mansfield's Car and Cloud Atlas, directed by Tom Tykwer, Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski.

Among AR Content's other announced projects is Debriefing The President, based on John Nixon’s non-fiction account of interrogating the Iraqi ruler, to be directed by Oscar-nominated Ziad Doueiri.