Fukushima: Is There a Way Out?
In the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, a Japanese farmer ekes out a solitary existence within the radiation red zone.
It follows a group of investigators as they return to the nuclear zone in Fukushima to uncover the secrets behind the wildlife that has claimed the toxic environment as its own.
Short documentary about the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Chernobyl 1986. A nuclear reactor exploded, spewing out massive quantities of radiation into the atmosphere. Within days, the pollution had spread across Europe. Living on land contaminated with radioactivity would be a life-changing ordeal for the people of Belarus, but also for the Sami reindeer herders of central Norway. It even affected the Gaels of the distant Hebrides. Five years ago there was a meltdown at the Fukushima reactor, and thousands of Japanese people found their homes, fields and farms irradiated, just as had happened in Europe. This international documentary, filmed in Belarus, Japan, the lands of Norway's Sami reindeer herders and in the Outer Hebrides, poses the question: what lessons have we learned?
Six months after the explosions at the Fukushima nuclear plant and the release of radiation there, Professor Jim Al-Khalili sets out to discover whether nuclear power is safe. He begins in Japan, where he meets some of the tens of thousands of people who have been evacuated from the exclusion zone. He travels to an abandoned village just outside the zone to witness a nuclear clean-up operation. Jim draws on the latest scientific findings from Japan and from the previous explosion at Chernobyl to understand how dangerous the release of radiation is likely to be and what that means for our trust in nuclear power.
The Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 triggered a tsunami, nuclear meltdown and mass evacuations in Fukushima Prefecture. Today, as part of a Government push to encourage resettlement, local hunters have been enlisted to dispose of radiated Wild Boars that now roam the abandoned streets and buildings. This short film follows a lone hunter into an isolated and changed landscape. Along the way, other citizens who still live near the reactor share their perspectives on the aftermath. "The Toxic Pigs of Fukushima" was inspired by the photographs of co-producers Toru Hanai and Yuki Iwanami. The original score was written and performed by renowned ambient artist Midori Takada.
"Alone in Fukushima" is a feature film documentary about Naoto Matsumura who remained in the nuclear zone with animals in Fukushima.
“Alone Again is Fukushima” is the long-awaited sequel to "Alone in Fukushima" (2015), which followed Naoto Matsumura, a man who remained in the nuclear zone in Fukushima to tend animals. The film has followed Naoto for nearly a decade and portrays how Naoto and the animals survived the residents' return to the town, Tokyo Olympics, and COVID-19. In the course of 10 years, many animals and humans were born and died. But Naoto remained in the town and took care of the animals. He raised chickens and kept bees in order to survive. In 2017, Tomioka became the place where people can come back to live, however most young people didn’t return. There is no end in sight for the nuclear crisis in Fukushima. The contaminated water is overflowing and will be pumped out to the ocean soon. Meanwhile the government is trying to restart the nuclear reactors all over the country. The film will give us a chance to reflect on this situation by looking at how Naoto and animals survive in Fukushima.
Centrales nucléaire : démantèlement impossible
Fukushima's Minami-soma has a ten-centuries-long tradition of holding the Soma Nomaoi ("chasing wild horses") festival to celebrate the horse's great contribution to human society. Following the meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in the wake of the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami, local people were forced to flee the area. Rancher Shinichiro Tanaka returned to find his horses dead or starving, and refused to obey the government's orders to kill them. While many racehorses are slaughtered for horsemeat, his horses had been subjected to radiation and were inedible. Yoju Matsubayashi, whose "Fukushima: Memories of the Lost Landscape" is one of the most impressive documentaries made immediately after the disaster, spent the summer of 2011 helping Tanaka take care of his horses. In documenting their rehabilitation, he has produced a profound meditation on these animals who live as testaments to the tragic bargain human society made with nuclear power.
Amateur's Riot (Shirōto no ran) is a Japanese association of activists, committed to the living conditions of the poor people (binbōnin) in Tōkyō. The association was founded in 2005 by Matsumoto Hajime, Yamashita Hikaru, Futatsugi Shin, Mochitsuki Rui and Ogasawara Keita. The protagonists of Shiroto no Ran played an important role in the anti-nuclear demonstrations that appeared in response to the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe.
Eerie images of landscapes after the Fukushima nuclear disaster shot on black and white 8mm.
Oscar winning composer Ryuichi Sakamoto weaves man-made and natural sounds together in his works. His anti-nuclear activism grew after the 2011 Fukushima disaster, and his career only paused after a 2014 cancer diagnosis.
30 years after the Chernobyl catastrophe and 5 years after Fukushima it is time to see what has been happening in the “exclusion zones” where the radioactivity rate is far above normal.
TEPCO's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant is the site of one of history's worst nuclear disasters: the meltdown of three nuclear reactors. The decommissioning program in Japan learns from the Three Mile Island decommissioning in the US after the nuclear plant accident in 1976 in Pennsylvania.
A powerful documentary that sheds some light on what really happened at the Fukushima nuclear power plant after the 2011 earthquake and the tsunami that immediately followed. A powerful documentary - shot from March 11th, 2011 through March 2015 - that sheds some light on what really happened at the Fukushima nuclear power plant after the 2011 earthquake and the tsunami that followed.
In a quiet forest, a sign warns of radiation hazard. “Is this the past or the future?” muses the masked figure who appears like a kind of ghost in nuclear disaster areas. At a time when nuclear power may be re-emerging as an alternative to fossil fuels, this calmly observed and compelling tour takes us to places that may serve as a warning.
After the 11 March 2011 tsunami and nuclear disaster, residents of Futaba, a town in Fukushima Prefecture, are relocated to an abandoned high school in a suburb of Tokyo, 150 miles south. With a clear and compassionate eye, filmmaker Atsushi Funahashi follows the displaced people as they struggle to adapt to their new environment. Among the vivid personalities who emerge are the town mayor, a Moses without a Promised Land; and a farmer who would rather defy the government than abandon his cows to certain starvation.
Every nuclear weapon made, every watt of electricity produced from a nuclear power plant leaves a trail of nuclear waste that will last for the next four hundred generations. We face the problem of how to warn the far distant future of the nuclear waste we have buried --but how to do it? How to imagine the far-distant threats to the sites, what kinds of monuments can be built, could stories or legends safeguard our descendants? Filmed at the only American nuclear burial ground, at a nuclear weapons complex and in Fukushima, the film grapples with the ways people are dealing with the present problem and imagining the future. Part observational essay, part graphic novel, this documentary explores the idea that over millennia, nothing stays put.