documentary projects
On February 24, 2022 the Russian Federation troops entered the Chornobyl exclusion zone and seized the Chornobyl NPP, the site of one of the world’s worst nuclear disasters. The Chornobyl power plant remained under control of the occupiers until March 31, 2022, when they were forced to withdraw to Belarus after the defeat in the battle for Kyiv. Occupiers’ actions at Chornobyl were recorded by surveillance cameras, and the recordings were saved by the plant’s employees, as well as numerous recordings made by eyewitnesses. The work with these records, as well as in-depth interviews with eyewitnesses, will become the basis of the script for War in Chornobyl.
Our film carefully recreates the history of this war crime to uncover its planetary scale. The presence of russian forces in Chornobyl risked the threat of another nuclear disaster which could have greatly exceeded the tragedy of 1986. The military occupation of the Chornobyl NPP had no precedent: russian army was the first one in history that used military force for seizing a nuclear power plant. Lawyers and military historians already call this occupation a war crime of a new type, qualifying it as a type of nuclear terrorism.
The film is built on a series of thorough interviews with the immediate eyewitnesses of Chornobyl’s russian occupation: power plant employees, residents of Chornobyl, settlers of the Chornobyl exclusion zone etc. Their accounts, compared with the videos from their phones, recordings of surveillance cameras, and our own cinematic observations of the Zone right now, will come together into a mosaic reconstruction of the unprecedented war crime which put mankind under threat. The film will call for justice for those culpable in this crime at the International Criminal Court (eyewitness accounts that laid the basis of this script, were collected in cooperation with international lawyers who plan to file a case against the Russian Federation for nuclear terrorism).
PROJECT TEAM
OLEKSIY RADYNSKIY, scriptwriter
Oleksiy Radynski – film director, writer. Lives in Kyiv. His debut feature film Infinity According to Florian (2022) had its world premiere at the Rotterdam film festival, and took part in Sheffield Doc Fest, Docs Against Gravity, Doc Aviv, Krakow IFF, etc. His short films took part in the Oberhausen IFF, DOK Leipzig, Kurzfilmtage Winterthur and other festivals, and were awarded at Docudays UA, Kyiv IFF Molodist, Kyiv International Short Film Festival, and others.
LYUBA KNOROZOK, producer
Lyuba Knorozok is a producer of documentary and fiction films. Among her latest works is Infinity According to Florian (Ukraine - USA) directed by Oleksiy Radynski, which had its world premiere at the International Film Festival in Rotterdam in 2022. Her film Space Citizens (USA - Japan - Ukraine) premiered at Berlinale in 2020. Films she worked on have received a number of awards at international film festivals, including Docudays UA, Docs Against Gravity, and Kyiv IFF Molodist. She was also a production manager on Donbas by Sergei Loznitsa, and line producer at Frost by Sharunas Bartas. She produces projects for BBC World News and the European Culture Foundation, Hromadske TV , VICE News and many others.