Atomic Summer

Victor and his friends had a different idea of a hot summer: A dangerous incident at the local nuclear power plant takes the residents by surprise and forces them to flee. Victor's clique, including his pregnant girlfriend, misses the opportunity to evacuate due to a car breakdown. Fearful, the six young people take refuge in an abandoned farmhouse in the middle of the endangered zone and watch the disaster unfold via the media. Due to the threat of radioactive fallout, every decision they make in the next 24 hours seems to be a matter of life and death. Thanks to the remarkably atmospheric camera work of cinematographer Simon Beaufils, who previously shot the Cannes-winning film "Anatomy of a Fall", "Atomic Summer" creates a realistic, highly suspenseful threat scenario. The risks of a nuclear incident become tangible and palpable, while the group dynamics of the trapped young people take on a life of their own. Four of the six young actors were making their screen debut with their roles. The emphatically unagitated production by Gaël Lepingle, who actually comes from documentary filmmaking, lends the disaster film a seriousness that makes it a contribution to the resurgent debate on nuclear power in times of energy crisis. „Gaël Lépingle describes with great precision, through the empirical reactions of the characters (who cobble together protections against radiations and use a mobile phone as a Geiger counter), the reality of such an event at a human level, all while painting in relief what young people’s life is like in the provinces of the deep countryside. From denial to acceptance, from individualism to solidarity to selfishness, from fear and waiting to limited action, the film offers, with an effective minimalism, a very complete overview, at once documentary-like and romantic, of an extraordinary situation, in the shadow of the menacing white smoke coming from the two tall cheminess of the power plant.“ (Fabien Lemercier, in: cineuropa.de)