Children of Chernobyl

This is an extraordinary film. Full of pseudo science and myth and the most vile use of journalistic licence possible. Chernobyl was awful, the men who arrived to clear the site were doomed, those fighting the fires were receiving gigantic doses. Parts of the reactor, it's fuel and control rods were strewn across the site. The glowing core filmed through the roof of the reactor building from a nearby helicopter were pure hellish visions. Around that time the whole world went sort of mad with crazy speculation that it was the end of the world and we would all be poisoned. The truth was rather different. Unfortunately nobody told this director who scoured Kiev for all the sick children he could find and blamed Chernobyl as he took footage of tortured children. I felt sick watching this. It's full of bad science and extremely poor research and bad non-facts and MYTH. Absolutely appalling documentary, where trying to do the right thing, which I'm sure he was, has failed in a bad, bad way.

This was a film I watched in one of my anthropology classes at the UofA, spring of '98. Not even 'Schindler's List' made me cry as much as this film. Don't get me wrong, 'Schindler's List' is gut wrenchingly serious, and made my heart ache, but it happened long before I was born. The accident at Chernobyl sticks out in my mind not only because of its horrific nature, the multitude of lies that followed, but also because it happened in my lifetime.

Viewing this film one begins to barely understand the perpetual after shocks of Chernobyl. From the cycle of the contaminated land, the poisoned grass that grows on it, the cows who eat the toxic grass, to the people who eat and drink the tainted cow products, and all the illness that stems from the radiation. Illness that the government, at the time, refused to step up and recognize, and help treat.

A bulk of the film is shot right after Chernobyl blew its top. Meaning that not only are the people being filmed receiving more than their share of radiation, but those filming do as well. After a while, you begin to think, why on earth are these people filming this? Normally when you watch a film, fiction or non, you understand what is happening to the characters, but in real life the actors and the rest of the crew are fine. But everything you see in 'Children of Chernobyl' has been contaminated by radiation. There is no way to get away from it.

Be sure to have a box of tissues, and maybe some paper towels when you watch this. You are going to need it.