Inside Fukushima's Exclusion Zone | Watch Now! (& My Private Thoughts) (Patreon)

The documentary about Fukushima is finally up!
► Watch: https://youtu.be/YDvKkG1FTbU

Now this was a tough one.
I made at least 12 versions of this documentary until I felt I finally had something that wasn't awful.

What that means is I'd finish it, render it for an hour, watch it over, then decide I needed to change it. Maybe the soundtrack didn't fit, the color grading was off or there simply weren't enough cows eating pineapples.

I think one of the problems was, with any documentary or story you need to have a narrative arc. And I'd hoped to give at least some kind of positive angle or spin on Fukushima - similar to my previous tsunami documentary in 2018 or Natsuki the Movie. You always need to end with some kind of resolution, whether it's a town that's been rebuilt with optimism, or a guy singing about life being balloons. You need that feel good ending.

But when you're walking through an irradiated town undergoing a $200bn decontamination effort, covered in black bags and collapsing houses, with 42,000 locals evacuated across the country, and several hundreds cows randomly eating pineapples, it's hard to put on a cheery smile and remark "Well what a happy ending indeed. A valuable lesson learned for all".

It's strange to witness the aftermath of a disaster that happened over 8 years ago, but is still ONLY technically in its early stages, given the clean up and decommissioning of the Daiichi reactor will take 30-40 years.

That being said, I was surprised to find the radiation levels were lower than I anticipated and in fact, the World Atomic Agency estimates the fallout to be just 10% of the levels experienced by Chernobyl. And there were certainly encouraging signs that the clean up was working - particularly when it came to wielding the Geiger counter.

If I aimed to achieve one thing in this documentary though it was to try and focus on the stories of the locals and the suffering of the towns themselves. I feel they've been completely overlooked over the years, dwarfed by the spectacle of the reactor itself.
And to that end, I'd say I'm pleased with how it turned out for the most part.

I definitely won't rule out returning again one day to interview more of the locals and hear their stories, but all in all, I'm glad I finally visited the Fukushima Exclusion Zone. It was surreal to see - with my own eyes - the disaster that's dominated the world's media for almost a decade now.

One things for sure though.
- I'll never forget "Cowzilla" either.

That'll stay with me until the day I die.

I hope you guys enjoyed the documentary! Let me know your thoughts below!