Pripyat

Within the 30-km radius around Chernobyl, supposed to mark the limits of danger, men and women continue to come and go. Nikolaus Geyrhalter strolls with them around these ghostly landscapes, juxtaposing the views of the power plant employees aware of the dangers that lurk under an apparently inoffensive nature, with those of the residents who refused to leave their homes or have been abandoned to their fate, and who continue to pick mushrooms in the nearby woods. Through the unrelenting construction of his film, the director presents the catastrophe as much more than a simple accident: the result of very specific policies whose best weapons are negligence and disinformation. (Olivia Cooper-Hadjian)