‘The Tribe’ Director Plans New Film to Be Shot In Chernobyl Nuclear Exclusion Zone

The director of controversial Cannes award-winning Ukrainian film The Tribe is to begin shooting next month his new feature, Luxembourg — set on location within the territory of Chernobyl, the site of the world’s worst atomic reactor meltdown.

Miroslav Slaboshpitskiy’s film is Ukraine’s most ambitious ever co-production, involving Ukraine, France, Norway and Germany.

The film has received top-level international support since its development stage, including a Sundance Global Filmmaking Award for the best script. 

Slaboshpitsky — whose debut feature about a school for deaf mutes who run a criminal protection racket took the top prize at Cannes Critics’ Week this year — will shoot entirely within the exclusion zone of Chernobyl, in northern Ukraine. He plans to be shooting through December and January. After his Cannes win the director was picked up for representation internationally by Lee Stobby Entertainment and CAA.

Slaboshpitsky first shot in the exclusion zone in 2012 for his short drama Nuclear Waste, which won a silver leopard at Locarno that year.

Supported by the Ukrainian state film agency, France’s CNC (Cinema du Monde), Rotterdam Film Festival’s Hubert Bals Fund for development and the Hubert Bals Fund Europe for production and Norway’s Sorfund, Luxembourg takes its name from the similar size of the European country and the area around the Chernobyl nuclear reactor contaminated by radioactivity after the 1986 disaster that sent a plume of radioactive contamination across Europe.

The film tells the story of a group of people living in a permanent nuclear winter in a primitive post-apocalyptic society in the ruins of the old civilization destroyed by an atomic war.

It is produced by Anna Katchko (Tandem Production, Germany) and Valentyn Vasyanovych (Studio Garmata Film, Ukraine). 

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