A Film by Holly Morris & Anne Bogart

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World Premiere Los Angeles Film Festival June 2015 

Documentary Competition

"They lived through Stalin's Holodomor -- the genocide-by famine of the 1930s that wiped out millions of Ukrainians -- and the Nazis in the1940s.  Some of the women were shipped to Germany as forced labor.  When the Chernobyl accident happened a few decades into Soviet rule, they were simply unwilling to flee an enemy that was invisible",  Holly Morris - Special to CNN

​"Shoot us and dig the grave...otherwise we're staying", Hanna Zavorotnya - Babushka

For nearly 30 years a community of unlikely heroines have lived in Chernobyl's post-nuclear disaster "dead zone."  Stylish and stubborn, these fascinating women have survived, and even thrived, on some of the most toxic land on Earth.  They arethe last survivors of a community who refused to leave their ancestral homes after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986.  But the babushkas aren't the  only risk-takers: scientists, bureaucrats and even young men and women called "Stalkers" (who break in illegally to pursue their video game-inspired fantasies) explore the dystopian Zone and seek out its radioactive grandmas.  First-time feature documentary filmmakers Holly Morris and Anne Bogart's portrait of a community tells a remarkable tale about the pull of home, the healing power of shaping one's own destiny and the subjective nature of risk.

LOS ANGELES FILM FESTIVAL SCREENINGS

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World Premiere Screening - Sunday, June 14th - 11:45AM - Regal 14

Second Public Screening - Wednesday, June 17th - 6:00PM - Regal 14