Nuclear Nation

A haunting, disturbing film about the fallout of nuclear disaster, filmmaker Atsushi Funahashi's documentary Nuclear Nation was shot approximately one year after 2011's headline-making 8.9 magnitude earthquake that hit Japan and caused a huge tsunami. The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was damaged in the devastation, releasing radiation and leading to the evacuation of almost 200,000 people. The film looks at the lives of a number of these refugees as they carry on at a makeshift shelter in a former high school, awaiting developments that will determine their future. Frustration and anxiety grow as these people, who know that they have been exposed to possibly lethal levels of radiation, wonder why the government is taking so long to assess their health. Here, middle-class Japanese families contend with boxed foods and sleeping on floors, often reminiscing about loved ones who died in the disaster. Funahashi also films official meetings in which the nuclear power lobby is clearly and inextricably linked to authorities who exhibit greater concern over shoring up a failing industry than helping ordinary people who lost everything to it. Highly recommended. (T. Keogh)