LA TERRE ABANDONNÉE – ABANDONED LAND
Gilles Laurent | Japan, Belgium 2016 | 74 Min. | OmeU
In the evacuated zone around the nuclear plant of Fukushima, five years after the catastrophe, the village of Tomioka is still abandoned and empty of its five thousand inhabitants. A few rare individuals still live there, however, pacing a land burning with radiation.Matsumura san, along with his elderly father, takes care of animals abandoned in the wake of the nuclear accident. He was the first and the only person to refuse the order to evacuate. In his own way, by turning his life into a symbol and a testimony, he is militating for a denuclearized world. The Hangaïs, have decided to carry on farming their land. The Satos are gradually doing up their house with a view to moving back in. They are convinced that it will be possible to re-populate the area. Yet the “decontamination” works in the zone seem pretty derisory and vain given the scaleof the quake on both the human and environmental levels. On this sick, abandoned land, the peaceful existence and rational irrationality of these few diehards reminds us that a patch of land is, in the final analysis, our strongest bond to the world.
