“Radiation Became a Presence—Almost Like a Mythical Force”: Zhanana Kurmasheva on We Live Here

"Some places on Earth carry a weight that is almost impossible to put into words” is how Zhanana Kurmasheva puts it in her director’s statement for We Live Here, which world-premiered at CPH:DOX and next screens in the World Showcase section at Hot Docs. Fortunately, Kurmasheva has a way with images that allows her to artistically convey both the gravity and eerie specificity of the Semipalatinsk Test Site. Set in the breathtaking Kazakh steppe, it’s an otherworldly place where the Soviets spent over four decades — until 1991 when Kazakhstan gained its independence — conducting a whopping 456 nuclear tests; from which the radiation, unsurprisingly, continues to linger in the air, water and soil today. Indeed, more remarkable is the fact that, as the title alludes, folks live — and have always lived — nearby for generations (including the filmmaker’s mother who carries the stigma of being born in a test site-adjacent village). And by focusing on the ecologists struggling to map the fallout, along with one particular family — a grandfather documenting collective memories, a son fighting for government intervention to keep his daughter alive, and a tween girl who’s never known a non-nuclear existence — a bigger picture of cataclysmic environmental damage emerges. One that will eventually come for us all. A few weeks before the doc’s North American debut (May 2nd), Filmmaker reached out to the Kazakh director to learn all about this uniquely personal and political film (and how a documentarian goes about crafting such with funding from an authoritarian government).

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.