Foundation-funded film, Heavy Water: A Film for Chernobyl, directed by David Bickerstaff and Phil Grabsky, will have an airing on Tuesday 28th April at 10pm on MORE4. Reviews have been great, so get it while it’s hot!
“more an art piece than a documentary but is powerfully imagined” - The Telegraph
“every frame is a stunning photograph in itself” - The Times
“haunting images of the devastation” - Radio Times
“Both an exquisite indictment of tyranny’s disregard for technology, and an articulate elegy for human rights. Magnificent” - The Guardian
Based on Mario Petrucci’s award-winning book-length Poem for Chernobyl; Heavy Water, this film tells the story of the people who dealt with the world’s worst nuclear disaster at ground level: the fire-fighters, the soldiers, the ‘liquidators’ and their families.
Petrucci’s poetry forms the backbone of the film’s narrative. The poems are cut together with revealing archive and evocative location footage of the ghost-town of Pripyat and the surrounding exclusion zone. The poems are read by actors Francine Brody, Juliet Stevenson, David Threlfall and Samuel West.
Directors Phil Grabsky and David Bickerstaff travelled to Ukraine and into the exclusion zone to film the deserted town of Pripyat and the interior of the destroyed reactor. They have made an intensely moving film, which, rather than relating the technical details of the world’s biggest ever industrial accident, emphasises the effect of the disaster on the people of Chernobyl.