Chernobyl: Abyss

In 1986, firefighter Alexey Karpushin is stationed in Pripyat and trying to rebuild a relationship with Olga, a hairdresser and single mother. He plans to marry her and move the family to the coast, but the explosion at the nearby Chernobyl nuclear power station interrupts those plans. With the reactor damaged, a second, potentially far larger explosion threatens the surrounding region and beyond. Alexey joins the effort to control the disaster, and he later takes part in a dangerous operation beneath the reactor, where water in a reservoir must be drained before rising heat triggers another blast. He is assisted by engineer Valera and military diver Boris, and the film follows the three men as they descend into the flooded spaces under the plant. The story is set around the April 1986 accident and the emergency response that followed.

Danila Kozlovsky directs and stars as Alexey, working from a screenplay by Alexey Kazakov and Elena Ivanova. Kozlovsky also produces alongside Aleksander Rodnyansky and Sergey Melkumov. The cast includes Oksana Akinshina as Olga, Philip Avdeev as Valera, Ravshana Kurkova as Dina, and Nikolay Kozak as Boris. The film is Kozlovsky's second directorial feature, after The Coach (2018), and was made with backing from Russian state and industry bodies. Its reception was modest: on IMDb it holds a 5.2 rating from around 11,000 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 6.2 from roughly 586 votes, indicating a somewhat warmer response from that audience than from IMDb users.