# Chornobyl: Exclusion Zone (2014)

> Five young people chasing a thief who has vanished toward Chornobyl find their journey bending time and reality as the exclusion zone closes in.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/57098

## Facts

- Seasons: 3
- Episodes: 19
- Episode runtime: 48 min
- Status: Ended
- Genres: science fiction, drama
- Created by: Ilya Kulikov, Evgeniy Nikishov
- Network: TNT, TV-3, Premier
- Cast: Konstantin Davydov, Anvar Khalilulaev, Kristina Kazinskaya, Sergey Romanovich, Evgeniy Stychkin, Valeriya Dmitrieva, Vladimir Yepifantsev, Aleksandr Yatsenko
- TMDB rating: 6.5/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4032214/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: brisk
- Intensity: strong
- Complexity: accessible
- Violence: moderate
- Tone: eerie, brooding, tense, atmospheric, melancholic

## What critics say

Audiences rate the series mixed, with the first season the strongest and the later seasons more uneven.

## Synopsis

Chornobyl: Exclusion Zone (2014-2019) is a Russian science fiction series created by Ilya Kulikov and Evgeniy Nikishov for TNT and Premier. Across three seasons and nineteen episodes, it follows a group of five youths, led by Pasha (Konstantin Davydov) and Gosha (Anvar Khalilulaev), who give chase after a man who has stolen eight million rubles from them. The thief broadcasts on his video blog that he is heading for the Chornobyl exclusion zone, and the young travelers follow him into a landscape that grows more dangerous and confusing with every kilometer. Their pursuit of money and a fugitive turns into a disorienting puzzle of altered time and shifting reality, with Kostenko (Evgeniy Stychkin) and Anya (Kristina Kazinskaya) among the principal figures tangled in the mystery. Each season deepens the strangeness, and the tone is eerie, brooding and tense, with a steady dread of radiation and the unknown. Fans of Dark, Chernobyl and Stalker will find resonance in its atmospheric slow burn, its layered mythology and its sense that a catastrophe's history still bends the present. The series is an ambitious three-season serialized mystery with a bittersweet close.

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