Nuclear Waste nominated for the “European Oscar”

The filmmaker Myroslav Sla­bo­shpytsky’s 24-minute-long do­cu­mentary Nuclear Waste has joined the contest for the European Film Academy (EFA) awards in the Best Short Film of 2013 category. According to the Arthouse Traffic web review, the short film about a man and a woman working in the Cher­nobyl Exclusion Zone is the first Ukrainian movie to compete for the EFA awards.

As stated on the academy’s official website europeanfilmacademy.org, the Ukrainian film has been nominated by jury of the International Film Festival in Grimstad, Norway. This event, as well as the Berlinale, Rotterdam, Locarno, and others, is one of 15 international festivals eligible to nominate films for a main award.
“The director’s access to the cha­racters is admirable. It is a perfect description of the nuclear order and its impact, contrary to life. It shows a place where there is no more dialogue. The slow going mechanical pace of the film tells a story in itself – it leads us to a place where the human soul has been alienated,” the Grimstad festival jury’s review of the Ukrainian film, available at the academy’s website, reads.

By the way, Ukrainian audience had the opportunity to watch Nuclear Waste in November 2012, during the Ukraine, Goodbye anthology’s showing in cinemas. The film will come back soon at the Odesa International Film Festival, sche­duled for July 12 through 20.

“Unfortunately, Ukrainian history is only now becoming a part of the European discourse. In fact, Euro­peans are just now discovering the truth about Ukrainian history. However, when taken on its own, the Chernobyl tragedy is widely known in the world. Moreover, it has become part of popular culture,” Slaboshpytsky commented for The Day. “Thus, we have a lot of films about Chernobyl, but most of them resemble Return of the Living Dead, Forbidden Zone, the latest sequel to Die Hard, Transformers and so on. Of course, there are also serious productions such as Land of Oblivion and Collapse, but all in all, highbrow arts, including cinema and literature, have not completed qualitative rethink of the topic yet.”

According to the director, he has already received an invitation to visit the EFA awards ceremony in Berlin on December 7. It is expected that, among other nominations, the European cinema academy members will announce the Best Short Film of 2013 on that day.

Let us recall that Nuclear Waste has won several prestigious international awards, including Silver Leopard at Locarno International Film Festival and the Grand Prix of the Kinoshok CIS and Baltic Countries Festival.