Kyiv, 1989. On April 26, to mark the anniversary of the Chornobyl disaster, a rally will take place at Dynamo Stadium. The stands are packed, and the scoreboard reads, “Chornobyl, Prypiat: a cautionary tale.” The public, emboldened by Chornobyl and "glasnost" (Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of maximum transparency in government agencies' activities and freedom of information in the 1980s), takes to the streets searching for truth.
Despite the time that has passed since the tragedy, there is still no clear awareness in society of the real dangers posed by radiation, nor a sense that any officials have been held accountable for the catastrophe — or even for staging the May Day demonstration in the first days of dealing with the aftermath of the accident.
As in his other reportage films of this period, a representative of the critical school of Ukrainian documentary filmmaking of the 1980s, Heorhii Shkliarevskyi builds the film around the direct speech of his protagonists — liquidators, former residents of the "zone," and concerned Kyiv citizens. Alongside them, the microphone itself becomes one of the film’s protagonists — a late Soviet symbol of an awakened democracy. It is precisely at this time that people begin to speak about colonial relations between Russia and Ukraine
The film was digitised from a 35 mm positive print using a Blackmagic Cintel Scanner in 2026 by the Dovzhenko Centre Film Laboratory in cooperation with the Docudays NGO, with financial support from the European Union.
