Zvizdal (Tsjernobyl - so far so close)
Berlin/ Het Zuidelijk Toneel |
From 2011 until 2015 the Antwerp-based company BERLIN tracked an elderly couple from Zvizdal that refused to evacuate after the 1986 disaster at Chernobyl.
There is no electricity, no gas, and they exist by farming with their animals, a cat, a dog, a horse, a cow and some chickens and their own company.
Through this intimate documentary we get a glimpse into the elderly couple’s lives which is as heart-warming as it heart-breaking.
"Zvizdal is Berlin’s portrait of a chasteningly stubborn couple
Changing the world starts with meeting the individuals who embody that change. That seems to be the starting point from which Yves Degryse and Bart Baele have been travelling the world since 2003.
Their backpack is filled with curiosity and commitment, their eyes brim with admiration and their lorry holds a treasure trove of film equipment.
Encounters in Jerusalem (2003 and 2013), Iqaluit (2005), Bonanza (2006) and Moscow (2009) have become moving portraits of survival in places where surviving is hard, or made hard, by fellow humans. The portraits, as a whole, form the Holocene series. Berlin shows them in a theatrical setting, in such a way that you invariably feel like you are briefly in situ yourself.
They’ve done it again with Zvizdal, their sixth Holocene portrait. It was French journalist Cathy Blisson who told them about this old couple that has been living in a huge area riddled with radiation since 1986. Every year on April 26th, the day the nuclear disaster is remembered, they stand at their gate to welcome those who have come to remember their loved ones.
Berlin has recorded their encounters, but also the hard toil it takes to last in an environment that is becoming more of a wilderness every the day. " (by Els Van Steenberghe, published in Knack Focus, translated by Nadine Malfait)
