01
Chernobyl
1986
On April 26, 1986, Reactor No. 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded, releasing radioactive material across vast areas of Europe. It became the worst nuclear disaster in history—and changed countless lives forever.
The residents of nearby Pripyat were not warned immediately. For thirty-six hours, families continued their ordinary lives while invisible radiation spread through the city. Nearly 50,000 people were eventually evacuated and told they would return within a few days. Most never came home.
In the months and years that followed, hundreds of thousands of firefighters, soldiers, engineers, miners, doctors and volunteers took part in containing the disaster. Many worked with little protection and without knowing the true level of danger.
Chernobyl was not only a nuclear accident. It was a story of courage and sacrifice, but also of secrecy, displacement and silence. Its consequences did not end in 1986. They continue in the lives of those who survived—and in the generations that came after them.
Among those who went to Chernobyl in 1986 was Serhiy Bezborodov, a fire-service lieutenant and watch commander from the Dnipropetrovsk region.
“I graduated from the Cherkasy Firefighting School. Viktor Kibenok studied there too. He was a senior student. I knew him very well. We stood duty together and sometimes passed a single cigarette around. He was a good guy…”
Viktor Kibenok was twenty-three years old and commanded a firefighting watch in Pripyat. On the night of the explosion, he arrived at the power plant at 1:35 a.m.—only twelve minutes after the alarm. He led firefighters into the reactor building and fought the fires threatening the neighbouring units. Kibenok received a fatal dose of radiation and died within weeks. He was posthumously awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union.
“When the thunder struck, on the night of April 26, we learned about it from a very brief report. On May 1, they began recruiting volunteers to help contain the nuclear disaster. That was when I submitted my written request to go. It remains in my personnel file to this day.”
“A commander and a senior firefighter from my own watch volunteered as well. A combined detachment was assembled from across the Dnipropetrovsk region—about 220 men. We travelled to Chernobyl by road.”
Sergei arrived two months after the explosion. By then, the first fires had been extinguished, but the emergency was far from over. The destroyed Reactor No. 4 remained open to the atmosphere, releasing radioactive material into the surrounding environment. A vast operation was underway to isolate it beneath a structure of concrete and steel that would later become known as the Sarcophagus.
Large sections were assembled in less contaminated areas and then installed remotely whenever possible. But much of the work still had to be performed by people. Construction, decontamination and welding continued throughout the site, creating a constant risk of new fires.
“They did not tell us how long we would be there. The men who came before us had stayed for ten or fifteen days. We spent thirty days directly at the nuclear power plant, from June 26 to July 26.”
The workers entered contaminated areas wearing protective overalls, caps or hoods, gloves, boots and respirators. This clothing could keep radioactive dust away from the skin and reduce the amount inhaled—but it could not stop penetrating gamma radiation. Against that, their only real protection was distance, shielding and limiting the time spent in the most dangerous areas.
By the time Sergei arrived, radiation zones and dosimetry controls had been established. The workers’ exposure was monitored and the time allowed for each task depended on the radiation level. But the danger itself remained invisible. Radiation had no colour, smell or sound. It produced no immediate sensation. A man could continue working, talking and breathing normally while the dose accumulated inside his body. Only an instrument could tell him that he was standing in danger.
“Welding work was taking place around the fourth reactor, and we were there to prevent new fires. Two fire engines were brought inside the turbine hall so that we could respond immediately if another fire began.”
“They called the events of 1986 a war. At first, I could not understand what war they meant. They said: ‘April 26—the war began.’”
By September 1986, less than two months after returning from Chernobyl, Serhiy began to experience serious health problems. The strain of illness and uncertainty affected every part of his life. His marriage began to fall apart. Tanya’s family had also broken down by then.
They met at the home of mutual friends who lived near the local registry office. Both Serhiy and Tanya had come there for the same reason: each was trying to complete a divorce. Years later, they laughed at how absurd their first meeting sounded.
“We came together to get divorced,” Tanya recalled.
“Listen to what you’re saying,” Sergei interrupted her. “No one will understand. You came for your divorce, and I came for mine.”
But the registry office was closed that day. It was Monday.
Serhiy and Tanya began seeing each other. When he courted her, Sergei often brought sandwiches with black caviar. Tanya thought she had met a prosperous and impressive man.
“I thought, what a successful man I had found,” she remembered. “He was treating me to black-caviar sandwiches.”
Only later did she learn that Sergei’s mother bought the caviar for him because of his failing health. He shared with Tanya what little he had.
They continued seeing each other for almost a year, but Sergei repeatedly tried to persuade her to leave. He already understood that his life after Chernobyl would not be easy.
“He kept telling me, ‘Tanya, don’t do it. Don’t take the risk,’” she recalled. “And I kept saying, ‘I want to.’”
Two people who had met while trying to bring their old marriages to an end had found the beginning of another life.
02
CRIMEA
2004
The Summer That Started It All
I met Serhiy, Tanya, and their nine-year-old daughter Katya in Crimea in the summer of 2004, where they had come for a family holiday.
Serhiy was a liquidator of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. By then, Chernobyl had shaped his life for many years — illness, hospitals, and constant uncertainty. But when I first met this family, that was not what struck me most. What struck me was their attitude toward life.
They laughed a lot, teased one another, and somehow managed to joke even about death, which always seemed to be following somewhere close behind Sergei.
That summer was filled with the sea, the beach, Yalta, long conversations, family meals, and the simple happiness of being together. It was there that I recorded my first interview with them, never imagining that this chance encounter would become the beginning of a story that would remain part of my life forever.
Serhiy called himself and his fellow Chernobyl liquidators “larks” — birds that are the first to rise into the spring sky. He called his own struggle to survive after Chernobyl “Chernobyl-2.”
None of us knew then how soon Chernobyl would make its presence felt again — or how profoundly different Crimea itself would come to mean twenty years later.
03
Dnipro
2005
Between Home And Hospital
The family’s life moved like a pendulum: home, work, medical examinations, treatment, back home, back to work — and then the hospital again.
A few months after we met in Crimea, Tanya asked me to come and show Sergei the footage I had filmed that summer. He was back in the hospital, and she hoped that seeing those images would lift his spirits. So I came.
Tanya spent almost all her time with Sergei. At home was Katya, who had just turned ten. Tanya was torn between her husband, whose condition was getting worse, and her daughter, who was being looked after by neighbors.
I offered to stay with Katya while Tanya was at the hospital with Serhiy. And Katya and I began to play at making a film.
I filmed her doing her homework, in the courtyard, at the store, washing dishes, and on her way to visit her parents at the hospital. We shot it like a real film, thinking in sequences and close-ups: “Stand on your tiptoes — I’ll film your feet. Now a close-up of your hands as you put the washed plate in the drying rack.”
On his way home from the hospital, Serhiy said, “I’ll be back in action.” He continued to believe that he would recover, and promised Tanya and Katya that the following summer they would return to Crimea — to the sea, to the place where only recently they had been happy together.
04
WAR
2022
When War Came Home
On February 24, 2022, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Eight years after the occupation of Crimea and the beginning of the war in Donbas, the invasion brought destruction and displacement on a far greater scale. Millions of people were forced to leave their homes. Cities, towns, and villages became places of mourning, resistance, and survival.
The places connected to this film now carried another history. Crimea, where I had met the family during a summer holiday in 2004, was under Russian occupation. Dnipro, where I had filmed their life between home and hospital, was now a city under threat of missile attacks.
Throughout those years, we remained close. We grieved together when Sergei died on January 12, 2006, and continued to see one another whenever I visited Dnipro.
When the full-scale war began, I revisited the earlier footage and saw familiar images differently: a family at the seaside, a child doing her homework, a visit to the hospital, conversations about the next summer. These ordinary moments had become a record of a time that could no longer be taken for granted.
05
TANYA
2023
Living Through Fear
In 2023, we recorded an in-depth interview with Tanya about how she experienced the beginning of the full-scale war and how her everyday life had changed.
She described delivering aid: arriving at addresses and knocking on doors while explosions sounded around them and air defences were operating. It was then that she realised that even when you are terrified, you have to keep doing something.
War had entered familiar places and everyday routines. At work, the large windows rattled, and Tanya would move into the corridor, trying to shelter from flying glass and the blast wave. At night, she could not sleep. Her phone, with its air raid alerts, was always close by.
“But we all hope there won’t be a direct hit. Still, it’s frightening, so frightening. And you can’t sleep at night…”
In our conversation, we returned to Chernobyl. In 1986, Tanya was a student and had not yet become a mother. Now the fear was different — a fear for her child and the next generation’s future.
“Now I just want our children to have good lives.”
06
Katya&Anton
2025
A Wedding in Wartime
When I first met Katya in Crimea in 2004, she was nine. I filmed her at the seaside with her parents, Tanya and Serhiy. Later, in Dnipro, I followed her through the routines of childhood — homework, household chores, and visits to her father in hospital.
In October 2025, I filmed her again, this time on her wedding day. The little girl from those early images was now a bride.
Katya and Anton married in Dnipro on October 11, 2025, while Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine continued. Their wedding became a new chapter in a family story that began with our first meeting almost twenty years earlier.
Serhiy died on January 12, 2006. He did not live to see his daughter grow up and marry. In the film, footage of Katya’s childhood with her father appears alongside images of her wedding, bringing the family’s past and present together.
The story began with a family living with the consequences of Chernobyl. Now it follows the next generation as they begin married life in a country at war.
