Today, 04/26/2024, marks the 38th anniversary of the Chernobyl catastrophe, the most serious nuclear accident in the history of humanity, with a number of victims still difficult to determine today due to the complexity of the long-term effects of radiation and the difficulty in accurately tracking illnesses and deaths associated with the accident. A UN estimate speaks of 4,000 victims, but many experts speak of a substantial underestimate.
Chernobyl, therefore, is not history, but a dramatic current event, which once again returned to the forefront of the news with the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. But Chernobyl was not just destruction, death, anguish, it was also the beginning of a broad solidarity movement aimed at temporarily hosting children from contaminated areas so as to promote air exchange that would allow them to drastically reduce absorption of radioactivity in the body, thanks to permanence in an uncontaminated environment and a diet free of radionuclides.
From the early 1990s until 2020, Italy welcomed approximately 600,000 Belarusian children and over 100,000 Ukrainian children, as part of the so-called “Chernobyl Projects”, welcoming over 60% of all children hosted abroad alone. Our country alone has done more than all the other countries in the world combined.
For the first time this page of concrete solidarity, of which our whole country should be proud, arrives on the big screen with the documentary film “The Storks of Chernobyl” (Italy, 2024, 69′) directed by Karim Galici and produced by Cittadini del Mondo Cinema per il Sociale with the support of the Sardinia Foundation in collaboration with RAI TECHE.
The documentary brings to light a poetic reflection on what Chernobyl was, not from the point of view of destruction and radiation, but by telling some of the beautiful stories born afterwards, thanks to the welcome and solidarity of Italian families.
After the Italian national premiere at the Casa del Cinema in Rome last March, the Swiss national premiere is also scheduled in Lugano on May 25th, furthermore, also in May, the film will debut in Naples and Sorrento.
Starting from the accident of 26 April 1986, the documentary ventures a few kilometers from the power station, following the traces of a survivor who leads the crew towards his native home evacuated almost forty years ago, and then collects the testimony of a liquidator who intervened to put out the fires that broke out immediately after the explosion.
But what happened to those children hosted by Italian families, what is their life today?
The film tells the stories of rebirth of children, now young adults, forever marked by that April 26, 1986, the date of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
Different paths and figures alternate in the film: like the three brothers, who after growing up separated in three orphanages find themselves united by a large extended Italian family; the girl who, through training, finds work and stability in Sardinia, but decides to return to her homeland for love, or the two little girls who became best friends after being welcomed by Grandma Barbara, with whom they continue to remain in close contact as two true grandchildren.
Between past, present and future “The Storks of Chernobyl” is a set of stories where the experiences of the protagonists flow in a flow of references and flashbacks to continually reunite with the nuclear disaster from which it all started. Stories, not only of destruction, but also of bridges that have been built between people and peoples.
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