Call for Reviewers: NUCLEAR NATION Documentary Film

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NUCLEAR NATION

March 11, 2011: A huge tsunami triggered by an 8.9 magnitude earthquake hits Japan, crippling the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, releasing radiation, and turning the residents of Futaba into "nuclear refugees."  The devastation experienced by the town-dead livestock left to rot, crops abandoned, homes and businesses destroyed-was profoundly worse than anything reported by the mainstream media.

Futaba locals heard the hydrogen explosion at Reactor Number 1 and were showered with nuclear fallout. In response, the Japanese government designated the whole town as an "exclusion zone" and 1,400 of the town's residents fled to an abandoned high school 250 kilometers away.

The entire community, including the Town Hall office, was moved into the four-story building, making the residents nuclear refugees. The film portrays the evacuees as the nuclear disaster situation changes over time. One of them is Ichiro Nakai, a farmer who lost his wife, his home, and his rice fields in the massive tsunami. Doing his best to cope with the monotony of life at the evacuation center, he struggles to wipe away the haunting memories and start a new life with his son. The two finally get an official permit to enter the exclusion zone to visit their hometown. There, they see that their worst fears have become reality...

Katsutaka Idogawa, Futaba's mayor, was an active supporter of the government's nuclear policies, and lobbied to build two additional reactors. After realizing his constituents were exposed to significant amounts of radiation and that the situation at the TEPCO plant is still unstable, his beliefs begin to change.

A year later, many refugees are still unable to return to contaminated homes. The irony of this disaster occurring in a nation that experienced two nuclear bombs is not lost on the victims who poignantly question their responsibility for striking a Faustian bargain with nuclear power.

NUCLEAR NATION is a quiet, intimate film about one community in the aftermath of this still-unfolding disaster, perhaps the worst nuclear disaster in our history. (52MINor93MIN)

Dylan McGinty

First Run Features

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