: Exploration after apocalypse
Iara Lee
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THE film festival circuit is frozen for lockdown, so how are independent film-makers to ply their trade? Cultures of Resistance Films has released this gem to free streaming services. Though it won鈥檛 get it, the documentary deserves a big splash.
Stalking Chernobyl is a gripping and sensitive exploration of how 鈥� little by little, awkwardly and not without controversy and conflict 鈥� ordinary people are reclaiming the site of the world鈥檚 worst nuclear accident.
In 1970, near the Ukraine-Belarus border, ground was broken for the Chernobyl nuclear complex and the neighbouring workers鈥� city of Pripyat. Chernobyl was constructed in a worrying rush, but Pripyat was a labour of love and appreciated by many who lived there. It was a comfortable, well-designed and family-friendly city, full of trees and roses. It had good public transport, a river to wade in, excellent day care and schools, a cracking swimming pool鈥� the list goes on.
On 26 April 1986, an uncontrolled chain reaction tore through Chernobyl鈥檚 No. 4 reactor. Pripyat was evacuated and a 30-kilometre-radius exclusion zone was established while people fought 鈥� and died 鈥� to prevent further catastrophe.
The zone is still in place, but it can be visited. I went around four years ago, during the depths of winter. Guides showed us the main sites under snow, fed us in Chernobyl鈥檚 cavernous canteen and led us through Pripyat, already half-swallowed by surrounding forest. It was lonely and cold. There were wolves.
Since then, the number of visitors to the exclusion zone has doubled each year. That鈥檚 40,000 people as clueless as I was, now traipsing about the place.
With them come problems and annoyances. Trespassers build fires at night with local wood, not realising how much radiation they are releasing. Tourists dress up the sites to get better photos. The dolls you find littering an abandoned school are dropped there by tourists, and so are half the books.
鈥淥rdinary people are showing love and care, each in their own way, to one of the saddest places on the planet鈥�
Stalking Chernobyl鈥榮 great strength is that it doesn鈥檛 rush to judgement. Isn鈥檛 leaving a doll here a little like leaving a wreath? Since when was it wrong to want to explore?
Old hands in the zone complain about the cluelessness of the self-styled 鈥渟talkers鈥� who sneak into the site. Yet everyone 鈥� even the mayor of Pripyat, whose job it is to keep the zone secure 鈥� understands what brings them here.
Meeting communities of trespassers, tourists and guides, we discover that the groups flow into each other. A stalker wants to become a guide. An ex-guide says she will return as a tourist. Several interviewees say the zone is a special place, one that will punish them in some way if they mistreat it.
The film doesn鈥檛 leave much room to get into the pros and cons of nuclear power. To my mind, though, director Iara Lee has made something more valuable, and certainly more unusual. She has shown how ordinary people 鈥� parkour enthusiasts and police officers, base jumpers and festival organisers 鈥� are showing love and care, each in their own way, to one of the saddest places on the planet.
Stalking Chernobyl had me trusting much more than usual in the ability of people to make the best of their society鈥檚 most terrible mistakes.
