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The Russian Woodpecker

Play trailer 1:44 Poster for The Russian Woodpecker 2015 1h 21m Documentary War Play Trailer Watchlist
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96% Tomatometer 25 Reviews 67% Popcornmeter 500+ Ratings
A Ukrainian survivor of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster discovers a dark secret and has to decide to risk his life by revealing it.

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The Russian Woodpecker

Critics Reviews

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Tom Huddleston Time Out 11/19/2015
4/5
Gripping conspiracy thriller, pretentious art biopic, timely political documentary -- 'The Russian Woodpecker' is all this and more. Go to Full Review
Sophie Monks Kaufman Little White Lies 11/19/2015
4/5
An investigative political documentary with a lion heart and a funny bone. Go to Full Review
Gary Goldstein Los Angeles Times 10/29/2015
Provocative, spooky and just a little nutty. Go to Full Review
Phil W. Bayles One Room With A View 05/08/2019
5/5
Stark and surreal, farcical and fearful, The Russian Woodpecker is an electrifying film about Cold War legacies that becomes frighteningly topical when viewed through the lens of European current affairs. Go to Full Review
Matthew Anderson CineVue 04/08/2019
5/5
The Russian Woodpecker is an arresting, thought-provoking and seismically important creation... Go to Full Review
Dorothy Woodend The Tyee (British Columbia) 08/16/2017
The relationship between the Soviet Union and Ukraine takes on almost unbelievable twists and turns in this film. Go to Full Review
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Audience Reviews

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04/02/2020 I had the feeling that it wasn't made seriously and that it had some scenes which were not helpful to narrate the main story, but more focused on "sponsoring" the main character's artistic capabilities. Furthermore, in the theory presented by this movie, the Duga System was capable of doing things to the human brain, even if scientifically, this has no sense. See more 02/04/2018 I am in no way a conspiracy theorist, but I am also in no way familiar with the very disturbing secrets which clearly lie within Russia and its former (and current) annexed nations. This film presents a very harsh, yet realistic possible explanation for why Chernobyl happened. Why a perfectly functioning nuclear plant which fed both the government and the people suddenly melted down catastrophically. Most people have since chalked it up as "just because", as if nuclear reactors sometimes just blow themselves up randomly. This film digs deep into that. Very deep. There's one part in which they interview a former scientist who worked at Chernobyl, and the details he reveals to them (after choosing to drink quite a lot) is chilling. Even more disturbing is knowing the risk he himself and the film crew put them all at by including that testimony. Confessions like that are very, very dangerous. Some may be put off by the filmmaker's unabashedly artistic montages of him in rather avant garde outfits and scenes, in between heart-stopping clips of him climbing the frightfully high towers that projected the Russian Woodpecker signal, and him attempting to wrangle information out of former Soviet officials. This creativity seeps through to make it more than just another cut-and-dry documentary. The filmmaker himself has a deep personal connection with Chernobyl, and expresses that anger in various artful ways. The film is a rollercoaster of ideas, suggestions, and suspicions, and leaves you wondering whether Chernobyl was simply an accident without explanation, or if there were powerful people who wanted it destroyed. See more 08/21/2016 A survivor of the horrific Chernobyl disaster of 1986 tries to make sense of it all as a young adult and find if there is a reason why it happened. Is there a correlation between that disaster and the nearby transmitter known as "The Russian Woodpecker?" He comes to a chilling conclusion. See more 07/29/2016 Must see documentary. The film's music by Katya Mihailova is beautiful. I remember how the news of Chernobyl's explosion has continued to haunt me since that day. This documentary has provided answers into the questions I have always had about what really happened. Fedor you are a modern warrior of truth - thank you for being so brave in the face of real threat of personal death. See more 05/30/2016 This is a fiction posing as a documentary. More Mockumentary than documentary, but Russian hating commiephobes are desperate to believe it's absurdities are factual; confirmation bias. A piece of barefaced, right-wing propaganda for the unelected, NATO backed, far right and neo-Nazi regime in Kiev, the capital. Don't pay money for it. See more 05/16/2016 The only problem of this documentary is that, in the end, is incomplete, due to the war that started off during the filming between Russia and Ukraine. Being a movie based on a personal investigation on a conspiration versus Ukraine (to be demonstrated) taken on by an Ukrainian artist who survived the Chernobyl disaster is completely out of any scheme, and is probably very interesting for what it shows regarding the political situation of the 2010's Ukrania, more than for anything else. See more Read all reviews
The Russian Woodpecker

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Movie Info

Synopsis A Ukrainian survivor of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster discovers a dark secret and has to decide to risk his life by revealing it.
Director
Chad Gracia
Producer
Colin Davis, Ram Devineni, Cristina Esteras-Ortiz, Mike Lerner
Screenwriter
Chad Gracia
Distributor
FilmBuff
Production Co
Roast Beef Productions, Rattapallax
Genre
Documentary, War
Original Language
Russian
Release Date (Theaters)
Oct 16, 2015, Limited
Release Date (Streaming)
Oct 18, 2016
Runtime
1h 21m