Chernobyl: Abyss 2021

1986, in Pripyat, a 30-year-old firefighter Alexey Karpushin, Danila Kozlovsky, begins to reconnect with a former lover, Olga Savostina, a local hairdresser, Oksana Akinshina. Their rekindled romance hits a snag when Alexey misses a picnic with Olga and their 10-year-old son, and she tells him never to visit again. He searches for a fresh start by seeking reassignment to Kyiv, only to be pulled back by fate when the Chernobyl power plant explodes, sending him onto a fire truck headed toward reactor number 4.

Alexey survives the initial firefight and radiation, but the disaster spirals as experts identify a greater threat: a potential secondary steam explosion from a massive water reservoir beneath the melting reactor. If released, that flood of radioactive material could plume into the upper atmosphere and imperil much of Europe. With decades of experience inspecting corridors under nuclear reactors, Alexey is drawn into a dangerous mission to drain the reservoir manually, a task that many see as a probable suicide. The situation becomes even more personal when he learns his son is also exposed to radiation and faces a perilous fate unless he acts. He agrees to join the operation on the condition that his son is sent to Switzerland for treatment.

After an unsuccessful first attempt, Alexey is encouraged by his teammate Valera, Philipp Avdeev, to make a second, last-ditch effort to relieve the reservoir. The second attempt achieves a breakthrough, but Valera is trapped and sacrifices himself by cutting the connecting rig so that Alexey can escape. In a final, harrowing moment, Alexey is found to be severely irradiated as the water drains. He is brought to the hospital where Olga finally embraces him, and she holds him close as he succumbs. Three months later, his son returns home after treatment in Switzerland, marking a quiet, somber closure to a mission defined by courage and personal sacrifice.

In the aftermath, the film lingers on the human cost of heroism and the fragile threads of family, memory, and forgiveness that endure long after the lights fade.