Decay / Rozpad

Decay is the first feature film about the Chornobyl nuclear power plant disaster, shot during the period of Glasnost and Perestroika, when censorship had weakened, but the State continued to fund film projects. The deep crisis of the industry would only begin a few years later and persist to this day. The film’s co-producer was the American producer Peter Almond, ensuring widespread international distribution of Decay.

On the eve of the Chornobyl tragedy, journalist Oleksandr Zhuravliov returns home to his family in his native Kyiv. However, tomorrow, the flow of everyday events will change forever. The history will again be divided into “before” and “after” the catastrophe. The scale and details of the accident are carefully concealed. Nevertheless, Oleksandr does not give up and tries to uncover the truth. Zhuravliov unquestionably becomes a symptom of his historical post-Soviet context, focused on the discourse of veracity and the search for truth. Soon this situation will change, and the post-catastrophe heroics will be replaced by a sense of national victimhood.

The film’s metaphor is quite transparent – it is not so much about the “decay” of radioactive substances as it is about the erosion of human relationships and the collapse of a cynical state apparatus. In the end, Chornobyl became not only a symbol of the inefficiency of Soviet socialist rule, triggering social and political transformations in the region, but also a key element of collective memory and the national history of independent Ukraine, a fundamental aspect of Ukrainian identity.