After Iqaluit and Moscow in 2011 and Perhaps All the Dragons in 2018, Groupe Berlin returns to Rennes for the premiere of its Holocene series, which takes us into the universal human condition through portraits of towns and their people. Refusing to evacuate, Pétro and Nadia chose to stay on their Ukrainian farm in Zvizdal, just a few kilometres from Chernobyl, in the heart of the no-go area the size of Luxembourg. For five years, from 2011 to 2016, Bart Baele, Yves Degryse and Cathy Blisson came in both winter and summer to interview and film the life of this obstinate married couple in their eighties.

With its double-sided screen and three miniature models of Pétro and Nadia’s hideaway through the seasons, this documentary installation delivers a raw and poignant picture of solitude, survival, poverty, superstitions, vodka, curses and hope in a ghost town where places frozen in time are overgrown as nature takes back its rightful place. This chilling nuclear Robinson-esc story plunges us into the lives of the couple who stayed in Zvizdal for over twenty-five years, as if erased off the planet. The moving documentary gradually shifts into a legendary story about humanity and old age, isolation and a strange post-atomic end of life.

In Rennes, Zvizdal will be a unique event held at a surprising venue. Let the story take you away!