Special Operation

Production countries: Ukraine, Lithuania Production year: 2025 Running time: 64’ Type of film: Documentary Languages: Ukrainian, Russian

SYNOPSIS

When the Russian troops occupied Ukraine’s Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant, their activities were documented by the CCTV cameras. Special Operation is based on that footage, recorded at the site of the worst nuclear disaster in history.

The Chornobyl Zone had been occupied by the Russian troops on February 24, 2022, in the very first hours of their all-out invasion of Ukraine. The Russians had turned the territory of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant into a military base in an attempt to occupy the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, located just a hundred miles away. The Russian plan was to stay in Chornobyl for just three days: this was their imagined time spanfor Ukraine’s downfall. Instead, the Russians were stuck at the radioactive site for five weeks, only to see their army collapse in the battle for Kyiv.

Most of their сriminal activities during these five weeks had been captured by the nuclear plant’s CCTV system, which the Russians had failed to prevent from filming. Special Operation is entirely based on these recordings. Each shot of this film is a piece of evidence representing a war crime of nuclear terror.

“As the Russian army and the police occupied the Chornobyl nuclear plant in February 2022, they shut down some security cameras, but others kept rolling. In this feature-length documentary produced exclusively from the CCTV footage Oleksiy Radynski and his team bring to the world the silent horror of occupation and banality of evil unleashedby the Russian war on Ukraine. It is up to the world to see, feel, think, and react.”Serhii Plokhy, the author of Chernobyl Roulette: A War Story“Oleksiy Radynski creates an almost disembodied examination of military logic.” Berlinale Forum Expanded

“As the Russian army and the police occupied the Chornobyl nuclear plant in February 2022, they shut down some security cameras, but others kept rolling. In this feature-length documentary produced exclusively from the CCTV footage Oleksiy Radynski and his team bring to the world the silent horror of occupation and banality of evil unleashedby the Russian war on Ukraine. It is up to the world to see, feel, think, and react.”Serhii Plokhy, the author of Chernobyl Roulette: A War Story“Oleksiy Radynski creates an almost disembodied examination of military logic.” Berlinale Forum Expanded

CREDITS
Directed by Oleksiy Radynski Produced by Lyuba Knorozok Editors: Taras Spivak, Oleksiy Radynski Supervising Sound Editor: Vladimir Golovnitsky

Produced by Kinotron Group, Ukraine
Co-produced by Jurga Kaye, Studija Kinema, Lithuania
The film was developed in cooperation with Public Interest Journalism Lab in the framework of The Reckoning Project

With support of: Ribbon International
ESFUF: European Solidarity Film Fund for Ukrainian Films