Land Of Oblivion
4 November, 2011 | By Mark Adams, chief film critic
Di/scr: Michale Boganim. France-Germany-Poland-Ukraine. 2011. 115mins
Michale Boganim’s powerful Land Of Oblivion(Terre outrage) is a fascinating and
impressivley performed drama about the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and the resulting
impact on the region and on Eastern Europe some ten years later. The casting of
Ukrainian actress Olga Kurylenko (fromQuantum Of Solace) may well help pique
distributor interest, though outside niche arthouse options festival exposure is
likely the film’s best option.
The film itself is both gentle and powerful – a low-key look into
the horrors that continue to have a terrible impact on the region.
Documentary filmmaker Boganim shows a sure touch with the film – clearly the project
involved a lot of research – and the tough story is balanced by charmingly odd moments (a
stampeding stream of horses gallop by tourists at the Chernobyl site) and some elegant
cinematography.
The film opens on a sunny day – April 26, 1986 – detailing the lives of a series of people
living around Pripyat, the town nearest the Chernobyl site. Anya (Kurylenko) and fireman
Pyotr (Nikita Emshanov) are married a few hours after the reactor blows, and after Pyotr is
called up to attend to the blaze he is never seen again; physicist Alexei (Andrzej Chyra)
understands what happens and orders his wife and son to leave, but ordered to keep silent
by the authorities decides to vanish, while forest warden Nikolai (Vyacheslav Slanko) refuses
to abandon his home…he argues that he didn’t leave during World War II why would he now?
The opening sequences are handled with subtly. There are no explosions, flames or
sequences of the disaster itself. Instead Pripyat of 1986 is impressively recreated, with the
implications of the explosion coming with the sight of a white wedding cake being drenched
in black rain and small birds and animals dying.
The tone switches completely in the second part, set in 1996 (and partly shot at actual
locations around Chernobyl) with Anna now a dour tour guide showing visitors around the
area; Alexei’s 16 year-old son Valery (Illya Iosivof) returns to the region to look for his
father, and elderly Nikolai cultivates his garden, unaware of the poisons in the fruit he tends.
Kurylenko is impressive as the increasingly tortured Anya, haunted by her past and troubled
by her current relationships, given far more to work with than her roles in Western genre
films. The film itself is both gentle and powerful – a low-key look into the horrors that
continue to have a terrible impact on the region.
Production companies: Les Film du Poisson, Vandertastic, Apple Film, Arte, Grading
Dimension Pictures, Belka Films
International sales: Le Pacte, www.le-pacte.com
Producers: Laetitia Gonzalez, Yael Fogiel
Executive producers: Igor Lopatonok, Sasha Shapiro, Olga Kurylenko
Co-producers: Hanneke van der Tas, Dariusz Jablonski, Violetta Kaminska, Izabela
Wojcki, Michel Reilhac, Remi Burah
Screenplay: Michale Boganim, Anne Weil, Antoine Lacomblez
Cinematography: Yorgos Arvanitis, Antoine Heberle
Editors: Anne Weil, Thierry Derocles
Production designer: Bruno Margery
Music: Leszel Mozdzer
Main cast: Olga Kurylenko, Illya Iosivof, Andrzej Chyra, Sergey Strelnikov,
Vyacheslav Slanko, Nicolas Wanczycki, Nikita Emshanov