Awards

"The winner of the 2015 CPH DOX Nordic award is Return of the Atom, directed by Mika Taanila and Jussi Eerola. Shot over eight years by the Finnish duo, Return of the Atom looks at how the bureaucratic might of a massive scale European construction project impacts on the inhabitants of a small community. With clarity and sense of purpose, Return of the Atom convincingly travels through the broad scales and global registers of the ramifications of building nuclear power stations in a post-Chernobyl world where decisions made by one nation or group can be potentially fatal for everyone else on our shared planet. From the individual characters who are confronted with a choice to either embrace the financial rewards of living in a nuclear town or try to resist the environmental and health dangers harnessing the atom brings, to the lazy and entropic bureaucratic labyrinth that accompanies such a megalithic project, Return of the Atom is in turns sensitive, satirical, critical and bemused, taking a complex, rarely discussed topic and creating a serious but engaging, subtle and poised film."