Azure Dust (2016)

Cesium-137 is one of the numbers of the radioactive substances emitted in the environment during the disaster at the fourth power unit of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant. In Latin Cesium means «sky-blue». Along with other hazardous substances, this azure dust contaminated the Exclusion Zone and resulted in thousands destroyed lives. The authors of the documentary project Azure Dust managed to find two people with unique fate who lived in Prypyat at the time when the disaster happened. Like many others, they were evacuated with a big delay. However, despite all this, they both managed to survive and demonstrate with their own example that you can beat the system and overcome the complicated circumstances if you have persistence, hope and faith. The film may be called a guide to the Exclusion Zone. Thanks to the unique footage from the place of the tragedy, that the crew succeeded to capture, the viewers will have a chance for a full immersion into the atmosphere of the events and, along with the heroes of the film, feel the dreadful and amazing air that reigns where one of the major anthropogenic disasters took place. The hero of the film will be the STALKER, a guide taking tourists to the Zone for money. We will pick him among the many professionals of this trade that almost literally incarnated in Chornobyl from the Strugatskys' novel Roadside Picnic. All the stories of the Zone will be threaded on the storyline of the journey with the stalker. In these stories, like in the Strugatskys' novel, invisible dangers lurk behind every bush - cesium is scattered around in unseen spots, and each of these is fraught with a hazard of exposure.