More than twenty years ago, when I was still a film student, I first met and began filming this Ukrainian family.
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Serhiy, Katya’s father, was a Chernobyl liquidator. He called himself and his friends “larks” — birds that are the first to rise into the spring sky. He called his struggle to survive after the disaster “Chernobyl-2.” For him, it meant trying to keep living against all odds — through illness, uncertainty, work, family life, and the constant presence of death.
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Through Serhiy, Tanya and Katya entered my life and remained part of it for more than twenty years.
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When Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine began in 2022, I called Tanya immediately and urged them to come to Canada. But Tanya said she would stay in Ukraine no matter what. So I went myself. I felt a strong need to be there — in the city where I grew up, with people whose lives had long become intertwined with my own.
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In talking with Tanya, I recognized the same inner strength — the fragile balance between fear and the will to live that I had seen many years ago. The same ability to support one another, to find warmth and even humor despite everything. And, despite what was happening, to keep believing — in victory, in justice, in the possibility that good can overcome evil.
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For me, it was important to be inside what was happening — to better understand how people change, what they think about the war, about Russia, about Putin, about Ukraine, about Zelensky, about the Russian language. The voices of ordinary people with such direct and painful experience often speak about reality more honestly and precisely than any public statements.
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When I learned that Katya was getting married, I understood how important it was for me to be with them at that moment, and I flew to Ukraine. Katya told me she wanted lilies in her bridal bouquet — the same flowers her mother had held at her wedding.
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For me, Chernobyl-2: Life After is a film about the tragic history of Ukraine, but also about time, memory, and the continuity of human experience. Two catastrophes, separated by decades, enter the life of the same family.
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And still, they keep living.