A still from 'High Power'

A still from ‘High Power’

A documentary on the people displaced by the coming up of Tarapur Atomic Power Station, India’s first nuclear plant near Mumbai, has bagged the Yellow Oscar at the Uranium Film Festival in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  The 27-minute documentary, titled “High Power”, was the maiden directorial venture of Pradeep Indulkar, an anti-nuclear activist from Ratnagiri, coastal Maharashtra.

Chandrasen Arekar, a displaced farmer from Tarapur, Thane district, received the award to a thundering ovation, from the chief guest, Junko Watanabe, the last survivor of Hiroshima nuclear holocaust during World War II.

In his acceptance speech, Indulkar said that apart from all the sorrows and distress highlighted by the documentary, the Yellow Oscar was a golden moment in his life as a filmmaker. Incidentally, Indulkar is among the leading personalities opposing the proposed 9,900 MW Jaitapur Nuclear Power Plant coming up with French collaboration in Ratnagiri.

Buoyed by the response to the documentary, Indulkar has submitted it for several international film festivals including India-Japan Film Fest in Japan, a film festival in Stuttgart, Germany and later at the Mumbai International Film Festival.

 About the release of the documentary in India, Indulkar said the Indian censors have restricted the movie release only through DVD.

The International Uranium Film festival was founded in 2011 in Santa Teresa, the famous artist quarter in the heart of Rio de Janeiro. The aim of the festival is to inform the public, from a neutral position, about nuclear power, uranium mining, nuclear weapons and the health effects of radioactivity.