One of the best foreign films of recent years came in the shape of The Tribe, which came courtesy of writer and director Myroslav Slaboshpyskiy and is set in a boarding school for deaf children that has become rife with crime, robbery, and prostitution. It is entirely silent, with the characters only using Ukrainian Sign Language to communicate and there isn’t a subtitle in sight. But Slaboshpyskiy has decided that his next film will be even more audacious, as he’s going to shoot in one of the most dangerous areas in the world.
The details regarding Luxembourg, which is the 41-year-old’s sophomore feature film effort, have been released, and it’s been announced that part of its production will take place in Chernobyl – which was the location of the world’s worst atomic reactor meltdown and is now mostly a ghost town. Luxembourg is a co-production between Ukraine, France, Norway, and Germany, while it has also been receiving further development help from Sundance, where it won the Sundance Global Filmmaking Award for best script. Production has already begun on Luxembourg, with Slaboshpyskiy having shot through December. He’ll continue to do so in January.
But why does Slaboshpyskiy feel the need to shoot in such a hazardous location? Well, because, according to The Hollywood Reporter, Luxembourg is set after an atomic war, and tells the story of a group of survivors who live in a permanent nuclear winter as part of a post-apocalyptic society.
This actually won’t be the first time that Slaboshpyskiy has shot in Chernobyl though, as back in 2012 he went into the exclusion zone for his short film Nuclear Waste. And clearly filming in this area worked wonders for Slaboshpyskiy, because Nuclear Waste went on to win the silver leopard at The Locarno Film Festival later that year. You can actually watch Nuclear Waste in its entirety below.
The Tribe followed just two years later, and proved that Slaboshpyskiy had managed his ascension from short to feature film length rather well. It went on to win the top award at the Cannes Critics’ Week earlier this year, and has since scored a rating of 86% on Rotten Tomatoes.
It’s a rather bleak but brutal film that is utterly gripping because of its lack of dialogue. It’s nice to know that Slaboshpyskiy’s next film will be just as unique and audacious. Fingers crossed that it’s just as impressive, too.
