"Chernobyl Heart" - Winner of the Academy Award ® for Best Documentary Short

Sunday January 01, 2006 01:42:45 PM

On April 26, 1986, the worst nuclear accident in history occurred when a reactor exploded at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine. Sixteen years later, award-winning filmmaker Maryann De Leo took her camera to follow the devastating trail this radiation left behind in hospitals, orphanages, mental asylums and evacuated villages. Winner of the Academy Award ® for Best Documentary Short.

The film prominently features the children of the Vesnova mental asylum, who are featured in the "Images" section of this web site. CCPI provides humanitarian aid to these children through a comprehensive program of renovations and nursing staff support. While we believe that no child should live in an institution of any kind, we were compelled to alleviate the desperately bleak living standards of these children.

Featured in the film is the work of noted cardiac surgeon Dr. William Novick, whose work in Belarus is funded by Chernobyl Children's Project International. Along with Dr. Novick's life-saving surgeries, the International Children's Heart Foundation's cardiac training program offers long-term hope to children suffering from "Chernobyl Heart."