Cinenews Archive

I Wish They Wouldn’t Build Anymore Chornobyls

By Christina Kotlar

On Wednesday, April 18 the Ukrainian Film Club of Columbia University hosted the New York and US Premiere of LA ZONA, (THE UNNAMED ZONE) a documentary feature film about three children and their families affected by the worst nuclear disaster in human history at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant. Filmmaker Carlos Rodriguez from San Sebastian, Spain was introduced by film club director Yuri Shevchuk and stayed long after the film’s conclusion answering many thought-provoking questions.

After twenty-one years, the zone surrounding Chornobyl is comparable to JRR Tolkein’s description of the land of Morder in THE LORD OF THE RINGS. Even Reactor Number 4 eerily resembles Mount Doom, rising above the dangerous and desolate (except for rotating teams of workers) countryside, its invisible radioactive fingers stretching across an otherwise stunningly beautiful landscape. These areas are vividly captured in this film that conveys the story through three young voices – Lida, Nastia and Andriy and their families – living just beyond “The Unnamed Zone”, an arbitrarily drawn circumference 30 kilometers surrounding the power plant. When Chornobyl exploded, it released two hundred times more radiation than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs combined. These are the ancestral homes of Ukrainians who cannot go back there for a thousand years.

The film is structured like a fairytale, told in the first person by the three children defining their situation as something unreal that could not possibly be happening in this day and age. Information and technological detection in the West announced the disaster to the world over twenty years ago, yet during the three- day evacuation of over 350,000 people, no one was told anything and that pattern continues today. Radiation falls and settles in patches and in spite of constant monitoring, the officials say everything is fine. But it isn’t fine.

The official number of deaths remains an unconvincing 54 (47 at the time of the disaster and nine from thyroid cancer) whereas the environmental organization Greenpeace estimates 100,000 extra cancer deaths with 8,000 deaths attributed to the disaster. The Ukrainian National Council on Radiation Protection claims to have documentation for 34,499 deaths. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates the number of deaths closer to be 50,0000 and after years of data analysis no one really knows for sure what the ramifications actually are or will be. WHO recommended that children living within a certain distance of the Zone go abroad for forty days out of the year to recuperate from stresses on their immune systems. Countries such as Australia, Italy, France, and Spain invite these children to do the convalescence within their borders. It is during one of these visits that the filmmakers became intrigued with the situation.

A vigorous Q&A discussion ensued with questions from the audience especially regarding health issues. Carlos listened intently and through his interpreter, Iban Ubarretxena, responded with information he learned on a daring venture into the contaminated zone with just a camera and a sound person. They were well aware of and concerned with the dangers of contamination as they collected visuals then conducted interviews to construct the story. The father of one of the children worked as a firefighter near the site and spoke candidly about his concerns for his children and for his own health. If there were too much radiation indicated on his person, he would be fired from his job – a job necessary to support his young and growing family. He and others note that the guarded sarcophagus is breaking down, with 3 of the 4 walls already cracked and deemed unsafe. The workers speculate that radiation is escaping from this decaying structure.

But life goes on and although the boundaries between reality and legend have been wiped out in this part of Never-Never land, views on the environment are expressed purely through the children’s opinions, drawings, poetry, songs and wishes. The filmmakers do not speak or understand the Ukrainian language, yet this film speaks so eloquently about Ukrainian people, their lives and their future as it is intertwined with consequences that are far more terrible and complex than purely medical. It pervades every single aspect of life for generations to come.

Director Carlos Rodriguez began his documentary filmmaking career at Canal+ SPAIN. After six years, he and producer Asun Lasarte established their film production company Morgan Creativos specializing in documentaries and other cinematographic contents for television. Many of their documentaries achieved international recognition in film festivals around the world such as San Sebastian International Film Festival, DocsBarcelona, Documenta Madrid, Seattle and Chicago International Film festivals, Docaviv, Sydney Opera House among others. A much shorter version of this film was also screened on Friday, April 20 as part of the Legacy of Chornobyl session at the 16th International Conference on Health and Environment: Global Partners for Global Solutions at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City.

Ukrainian Film Club of Columbia University© 2015. For more information please contact Yuri Shevchuk