I’m So Sorry

In a tranquil forest, we see a warning sign: radiation hazard! ‘Is this the past or the future?’ asks a masked figure. At a time when nuclear energy may once again be seen as an alternative to fossil fuels, Zhao Liang takes us to places that could serve as a warning. We see desolate landscapes and overgrown ruins around Fukushima and Chernobyl, abandoned houses with forgotten photos of former residents, the dismantling of a nuclear power plant in Germany, militant demonstrators, and the ghostly underground tunnels in Finland where highly radioactive waste has to be stored for the next thousand centuries. But we also see intimate moments of a Japanese couple in their emergency home, and two lonely elderly people who, despite the radiation, return to their abandoned village in the exclusion zone around Chernobyl. In the same region, a mother tenderly cares for her handicapped daughter. Due to lack of resources, we learn, her irradiated village was never evacuated. Like so many others, she married and then gave birth to a deformed child. These are touching encounters that offer a human counterbalance to the hushed threat. ‘I’m So Sorry’ is a beautiful yet horrifying documentary poem that makes us contemplate the catastrophic consequences of our pursuit of progress. It is an apology to the world, nature, and future generations.