Cinema
Raspad
Розпад
Mykhailo Belikov · 1990
Synopsis
On 25 April 1986, the journalist Oleksandr Zhuravlyov returns to Kyiv, where he is awaited by a confrontation with his wife, who is cheating on him, and by childhood friends who work in the city of the power plant's workers. The next day, a reactor explodes nearby; the scale of the accident is kept secret, the city keeps its festive air, and Zhuravlyov tries to break through this silence as fear spreads.
Context
Belikov, who lived in Kyiv in 1986, wrote the screenplay with Oleh Prykhodko, out of anger at the official silence. Shooting began at the Dovzhenko studio on 26 April 1989, the third anniversary of the accident, and took place in Kyiv, in Pripyat and even inside the plant, with a budget of a million roubles; for lack of film stock, discarded takes were reused. The American producer Peter Almond supplied equipment and hosted the postproduction in San Francisco. The film was released in the United States in 1992.
Who it is for
A fiction film of an hour and three quarters, in Russian, with a tone close to documentary; it reconstructs the evacuation and the May Day demonstration of 1986 in Kyiv, barely a few years after the accident.
Prizes and reception
Gold Medal of the Senate at the Venice festival and grand prize of the ecological film festival of Santander, both in 1990.
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