Catalogue > At random

The Chornobyl Zone - the site of the worst nuclear disaster in history - had been occupied by the Russian troops on February 24, 2022, in the very first hours of their all-out invasion of Ukraine. The Russians had turned the territory of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant into a military base for their troops in an attempt to occupy the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, located just a hundred miles away. They had captured the personnel of the nuclear plant who were forced to perform their duties without proper rest or sleep. The Russian plan was to stay in Chornobyl for just three days: this was their imagined time span for Ukraine’s downfall. Instead, the Russians were stuck at the radioactive site for five weeks, only to see their army collapse in the battle for Kyiv. Most of their illegal activities during these five weeks had been captured by the nuclear plant’s CCTV system, which the Russians had failed to prevent from filming. Special Operation is entirely based on these recordings. This film offers a unique perspective into the inner workings of the Russian military machine in Ukraine - and into one of its most grandiose failures. The CCTV cameras have recorded every aspect of Russian criminal presence at the contaminated Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant - from the gross violations of nuclear safety to the staged visits by the Russian TV propagandists. We have obtained these unique materials - which had never been disclosed to the public before - from the Ukrainian law enforcement as part of our team’s long-term effort to document Russian war crimes in Chornobyl, and to help bring their perpetrators to justice. Each shot of this film is a piece of evidence representing a war crime of nuclear terror. With this film, we wish to make this evidence visible - and by doing so, to expose the profound, and frightening, incompetence of the Russian army.

Oleksiy Radynski is a filmmaker and writer based in Kyiv. His films experiment with documentary forms and practices of political cinema. They have been screened at film festivals and exhibitions worldwide including Berlinale, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Doclisboa, Thessaloniki IFF, Dokufest, the Institute of Contemporary Arts (London), e-flux (New York), Taipei Biennial, Docudays (Kyiv), Sheffield Doc Fest, Krakow IFF, DOK Leipzig etc. His films received multiple awards, including the Grand Prix at the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival for Chornobyl 22. Since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, he has collaborated with The Reckoning Project.