The mood was more somber than usual at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival hub last Friday. The venue hosted the world premiere screening of HBO’s Chernobyl on the 33rd anniversary of the disaster. The event was part of the Tribeca TV section of the fest. A five-part miniseries, Chernobyl dramatizes the fall out from the catastrophic accident that took place at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Soviet Ukraine on April 26, 1986. The evening included a preview of the first two episodes of the series followed by a panel with members of the cast and crew. Jared Harris, Stellan Skarsgård, Emily Watson, Jessie Buckley, executive producer, and writer Craig Mazin, and director Johan Renck were all in attendance.

Chernobyl is a story of human tragedy, framed as a bone-chilling thriller. The series opens with Jared Harris’s character stating there’s been a cover-up. The remainder of the series is a menacing, “edge-of-your-seat” journey to figuring out the truth. Like all good narratives, it has its heroes, among them the scientists and physicists who speak the truth. It also has its sinister villain, the Soviet-era disinformation machine hellbent on controlling the narrative and deceiving the public.

The creators of the miniseries wanted to be respectful of the story. As a result, they did their research and sweated the small stuff. In the panel at Tribeca following the screening, Renck explained they shot at Ignalina, a decommissioned RBMK-type power plant in Lithuania that is guarded by NATO soldiers. There is actually a reference to Ignalina in Episode 2. It’s considered a sister plant to Chernobyl. As for making the post-explosion rubble look authentic, the production designer, Luke Hull, convinced the owner of a Soviet-era abandoned building in Lithuania to let the production knock it down so they could use the debris. The costume designer also used Soviet-era fabric, which tends to be stiff and uncomfortable. The actors found this detail particularly useful, as it helped them transform into their hardened, stoic Soviet characters.

During the panel, Mazin was asked about radiation as another character in the story. He responded that it added an element of science fiction, “We’re in a weird place, a different planet almost and a different time, fighting an invisible enemy that’s just killing everybody with no sort of visibility”. In a couple of episodes, a large cloud hovering over the town represents the radiation. But, the crew also got inventive. The production employed sound as a device, and cinematographer Jakob Ihre (Thelma, Oslo, August 31st) used subtle lighting techniques.

As for why Chernobyl now? The creators expressed that they are concerned with the global war on the truth. Narrative is a way we consume information, and it is currently being weaponized against us. The powers that be are discrediting science and making climate change out to be fiction. Renck remarked, “We have this tremendous capacity to fix the mistakes that we make and to prevent terrible things from happening, but we also have this tremendous capacity to delude ourselves until it’s too late. I hope that Chernobyl serves as a warning because that’s what it really is about.” He added, “It’s about lies and the dangers of self-delusion.”

Chernobyl premieres on HBO on May 6. “The Chernobyl Podcast”, a weekly podcast featuring Mazin and Peter Sagal of NPR’s “Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me” will run as a companion to the miniseries. It will take an in-depth look at what went into adapting the real-life stories for the series.

photo credit Liam Daniel/HBO