HBO Documentary Films presents the documentary Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes which will be coming to HBO and HBO Max later this month.
Directed by Emmy-winning British director James Jones, who also served as producer, the documentary reveals newly uncovered archive footage from thirty-six years ago, when a nuclear reactor in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded and thus originating what would come to be known as the worst nuclear accident in history. Accompanied by audio interviews with those who bore witness, the archive footage portrays the seriousness and horrible consequences of the harrowing disaster as well as detailing the extent to which the Soviet government tried to play down and even hide the reality of the incident from the rest of the world and its own people, including the soldiers that were dispatched to get rid of the damage.
This deep dive into the 1986 disaster poignantly and powerfully documents the story of the disaster and its rippling effect. The immersive and sometimes graphic footage was filmed on the site of the event during the hours, days, weeks, and months that followed the disaster revealing its disturbing consequences. Jones after having become interested in the event, unearthed an abundance of the footage from a variety of different sources. A very large group of people, from soldiers to miners, were sent to help contain the radiation at the detriment of their health, all the while the Soviet government persisted in not being overt about the severity of the incident. The documentary shows snippets of propaganda films that attempted to disseminate a sense of pride in the USSR’s nuclear program without addressing any of its flaws.
The aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster altered the lives of millions. According to estimates, more than 200,000 people lost their lives as a direct or indirect result of the accident even though, as the HBO miniseries also addressed, the official Soviet count is only 31. The way in which the accident was handled by those in power caused distrust in the authorities to spread among the people, and it ended up contributing to the fall of the USSR.
The interviews featured in the documentary include Ihor Hodosov, a miner; Ihor Pismenskiy, a helicopter pilot; Oleksandr Sirota, a ten-year-old schoolboy; Lyudmila Ignatenko, whose husband was a first responder; Nikolai Tarakanov, a Russian general; Oleksiy Breus, a Chernobyl engineer; Ihor Yatskiv and Nikolai Kaplin, liquidators; and Yuri Samoilenko, Deputy Chief Engineer of Chernobyl Power Plant. Some of these people were also named secondary characters in the 2019 Chernobyl series.
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes is a Sky Original documentary produced by Top Hat Productions along with Sky Studios. The documentary debuts Wednesday, June 22 at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT on HBO and will also become available for streaming on HBO Max.