AllMovie

On April 26, 1986 at exactly 1:23am, near Pripyat, Ukraine, the most devastating atomic accident in modern history transpired. An explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant obliterated much of the facility's reactor hall and the turbine building, and sent waves of deadly radiation scuttling over much of eastern and western Europe, Scandinavia and eastern North America. The fallout contaminated an untold number of individuals and forced the immediate evacuation of over 336,000 residents from Belarus, Ukraine, and central Russia. Carlos Rodriguez's fictional drama La Zona (The Zone, 2006) examines the devastating aftereffects of this tragedy on Lidia, Nastia and Andrei, three Ukrainian youths who still live in the immediate vicinity of the catastrophic event. Despite the passage of over twenty years, each child holds a 'Chernobyl Certificate,' which imparts unique government grants and aid, but also serves as a permanent reminder - a scar by which the children will ere be forced to remember the physiological damage wrought by Chernobyl on themselves and their family members. Through his film, Rodriguez paints a melancholic, enduring portrait of three young lives, forever damaged by falling into the path of a cataclysmic disaster that both preceded them and overtook them.