Special Screenings

Hong Kong, France, Netherlands / 2021 / 100 min
Director：ZHAO Liang

The residents of Fukushima are making huge efforts to remain in areas polluted by radioactivity. They cut trees and grass and move topsoil to try to clean up the contamination. Meanwhile in Ukraine, around the town of Chernobyl, old people continue to live alone in the restricted zone, cut off from the rest of the world and there are still children who appear healthy but suffer from the effects of radiation. A team of German workers is trying to dismantle the reactor and get rid of the radioactive waste, to avoid burying it for hundreds of thousands of years. This is the most recent film by director CHAO Lian, who made “Behemoth” (2015). This is not a factual documentary but an essay film that explores the madness of humanity’s self-destructive pursuit of nuclear energy in poetic language. The film was invited to a Special Screening at Cannes.