Nomades du nucléaire

A caravan stands directly in front of a nuclear power plant. This image combines a symbol of leisure and holidaymaking with the danger of harmful radiation that threatens France’s “nuclear nomads”. These largely young workers may receive impressive bonuses for their job inspecting and cleaning nuclear power plants up and down the country, but they are putting their health, if not their lives, at risk. In between parenting and route planning, they busily add up their daily and weekly radiation doses in the hope that they will be able to earn enough money before they reach the annual maximum and have to stop working. Profit at the expense of health is an all-too-common model that seems particularly problematic in the nuclear industry. Captivating images of reactors towering on the horizon like dark mountains feature in this poetic, dystopian graduation film by HFF Munich students Kilian Armando Friedrich and Tizian Stromp Zargari. It documents the world of precarious work and draws a connection between individual lives and the universal political question of how we want to, can and must produce energy in the future. (Berlinale)