The Babushkas of Chernobyl

This is a wonderful film that everyone should see! However, I feel it is not a balanced view of the situation, and the filmmaker should have presented some important facts such as --

1) 985,000 people died of cancer after Chernobyl, and that is from a 2004 statistic!

2) Children are the most vulnerable. In Belarus, (eleven miles away), only 20% of the children are born normal and well (there is a great documentary called Chernobyl Heart that tells that story of leaking hearts, etc.) The film does give a title at the beginning stating that Chernobyl released 90 times more radioactive material than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.

3) Because young males (with a lot of devil-may-care testosterone) are sneaking into the danger zone and drinking the water to brag to their buddies, and take selfies, etc, no filmmaker dealing with this topic should in any way be ignoring the scale of fatalities.

But -- Here's what I LOVED about this documentary -- it shows a remarkable true story about 100 or so women (average age 63) who have snuck back into the highly radio-active exclusion zone, to their homes which they were forced to evacuate. The government looks the other way if you are over age 50! They live off the land, drink the water, have chickens, dogs, cats, fish in the contaminated lakes, make raspberry preserves -- and somehow survive. They believe the land protects them.

This FAITH is very strong, and even some government workers recognize this as a protective factor. Government workers come by 3 times a year, and check the water they drink, the land, and their bodies, and they test with very high levels of radiation. But the women are not afraid of that. They have watched all their friends and family who were evacuated -- die. These strong old women are literally close to the center of the worst radiation, like in the eye of the hurricane. They live in the woods, drink vodka, sing songs, work hard and live very simply. (It is interesting that it is all women now, a few men tried it and didn't make it.)

In spite of its unbalanced flaws, this is a wonderful story of resilience, faith -- and a deep sense of connection to the land -- in the face of impossible odds. I am putting Babushkas of Chernoyl on my list for my film students to watch when studying documentaries.