Running with scissors: meet the post-punk band living in the shadow of Chernobyl

The Calvert Journal is happy to present the premiere of Swiss-British filmmaker Marc Wilkins’s micro-documentary Running with Scissors.

The film follows a young post-punk band from the northern Ukrainian city of Slavutych, which was purposefully built in 1986 for the evacuated workforce of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant after the Chernobyl disaster.

Wilkins was introduced to 19-year-old singer Kostya and his band Running with Scissors at a small concert in Kiev, during which he was struck by their “raw post-punk energy” and decided to make the trip to their hometown.

“The contrast between the angry but peaceful and poetic teen-generation of this city, and its Soviet heritage, was fascinating and led to making this small film,” the filmmaker told The Calvert Journal.