Ukraine, Lithuania 2025
65′
directed by Oleksiy Radynski
World premiere at Berlin International Film Festival 2025
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 span for 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.