Fukushima 50

Fukushima 50 (2020) is a Japanese drama and action film — watch online on iFILM. Director Setsuro Wakamatsu reconstructs what happened at the Daiichi nuclear plant in the hours after the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami knocked out the cooling systems. Nearly everyone at the facility was ordered out. About fifty workers stayed behind. Ken Watanabe plays the shift supervisor who had to make decisions that no safety manual had prepared anyone for.

The plant's operators face an impossible sequence: venting the reactors manually risks meltdown; waiting for authorization from Tokyo means pressure keeps climbing with no one watching. Communications break down. The men in radiation suits on the ground end up calling it themselves. Based on a bestselling account by Ryo Yano, the film stays close to the workers rather than the politicians scrambling above them.

What makes it land is how ordinary these fifty people are — they stayed not because they were ordered to, but because their towns were right there across the water. Stream Fukushima 50 (2020) on iFILM.