Near the landfill

CPH:DOX - aka the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival - is one of the coolest venues to present your work. Zhanna's film not only got there as worthy of showing, but was selected for the competition program, that is, it was recognized as one of the 12 best. The festival is dedicated exclusively to documentaries, and no one complains that these films are not interesting to the mass audience, do not pack halls.

Zhanna's film is 80 minutes long, it is a full-length work, the creation of which took three years. The idea was so cool that after one of the pitchings in Germany, the team received money to create a teaser for the film, there were already potential sponsors from France, but in the end, the domestic Center for the Support of National Cinema took on the financing of the project. This is the story of one family living near the Semipalatinsk test site.

- It so happened, - says the author, - that my work took me to an area that borders the so-called dirty territory of the test site itself. I was surprised that there were no visible boundaries, warnings, you don’t even understand at what point you end up in a place where access should be closed. Cattle wander into these places to graze, people come in and drag dust with radiation home. I was struck by this fact, and I began to look for heroes through whom I could clearly show the problem.

There are several of them. An old man who is writing a book about the test site: as a child he saw explosions in the distance, not really understanding what they were. Many times in his life he has watched as relatives, acquaintances, and friends pass away from diseases caused by radiation. His son, who is tormented by the question: is a sick child in their family a consequence of the test site or some unknown punishment? And the granddaughter herself, a teenager with aplastic anemia. With such a disease, you cannot change the climate, go to school, there is a high risk of bleeding and it is impossible to predict the state of health. It turns out that the whole family is constantly under stress.

- The family is trying to prove, - says Zhanna, - that the disease is connected with radiation, first of all they want to understand how it happened. But official medicine claims that radiation is not inherited, so it has nothing to do with it.

But ecologists who have been studying the condition of the area for many years admit that the radiation level may not be critical, but it is noticeable and it can indirectly affect people through livestock meat or dust from contaminated areas. In general, the topic is very large and deep, we had to study a lot of materials, and it was not immediately possible to obtain the consent of all the characters. That is why it took three years to create the film.

For Zhanna herself, this is also a philosophical conversation about something bigger. About the harm that people cause to the world around them, and about how we live in general...

- The grandeur of the steppe struck me. It has suffered from man and is capable of rebirth, it may seem dead, but after some time it shows how full of life it is. The fact that it is endless, that the eye has nothing to catch on to, creates a feeling that we are in the wheel of history and everything inevitably repeats itself: suffering, wars, human mistakes. It is as if we cannot get out of this vicious circle. There was also disappointment and even resentment. We can talk about the tragedy of colonization, but the country celebrated the 30th anniversary of independence, so why are we so detached, why are we, living now, indifferent to this pain? This applies, perhaps, to each of us.

Zhanna says that this work is special for her. It was filmed not to demonstrate her talents, but to convey information to the maximum number of people. It is good that the state found money for the film, but now she wants it not to end up in the studio's vaults after the world premiere, but to be available to the maximum number of viewers and to draw attention to the problem of contaminated territories and ordinary people living there.

Ksenia EVDOKIMENKO, photo by Timofey EVDOKIMENKO, Almaty