Father: The Story of a Liquidator

A short documentary by the Ukrainian photoartist Olesia Bilyk about her father, Serhiy Bilyk, a Chornobyl liquidator who survived radiation sickness after working at the third power unit in 1987. It looks at the long-term consequences of the disaster and at life after it.

The film is part of a photo installation: eight photographs, documents from her father’s service, and the film on a tablet with headphones. It was developed during the research residency of CHORNOBYL40, the European art-science-tech programme marking forty years since the disaster, and will travel with the project’s touring exhibition in 2027.

Głowicka composes the music and designs the sound, combining lyrical and pulsating electronics: emotional warmth that underscores resilience, and a way into the memory that the film asks its audience to carry.