Review of Unter Kontrolle

"Unter Kontrolle" or "Under Control" is a German documentary movie from 2011 that stays slightly under the 100-minute mark and is perhaps the most known effort as writer and director Volker Sattel who seems to be a multi-talented man usually focussing on cinematography. His award-winning work here focuses on nuclear plants here in Germany, a controversial subject for decades. It includes many interviews and footage from inside that is usually kept relatively hidden, which makes it a pretty insightful work. The film never tries to make an impact on the emotional level showing us the dedicated work of those demonstrating and giving it all for the cause regardless of their position for or against nuclear plants. The consequence is that it is a very sterile, very bleak work, but hey you cannot expect entertaining jokes and anecdotes from those working inside a nuclear plant. Humer Simpson is just fiction. It's not necessarily a negative aspect though. It is the path the director chose here and it is working most of the time. Also this film gave me a somewhat good feeling about the safety of nuclear plants really. Of course catastrophes through human failure can never be ruled out entirely, but it seems as if these men are doing a job as good as you could hope for to avoid something like Fukuoka here in Germany. The for me personally probably most insightful part was the short segment of information about how a terrorist attack could be realized early and they would release a gigantic amount of fog in the era to make it impossible for a plane to fly right into one of the reactors. Overall, it may not be a film we have here that will make you really interested in the subject if you weren't a bit beforehand already, but it is a topic important and contemporarily relevant enough today and still in 50 years probably that you shoulf not be 100% uninterested in my opinion. Sattel's execution is solid and it is all in all nice to see that the film did not go entirely under the radar. I still believe it is underseen. Go check it out if you get a chance to. It's sadly probably not too easy these days to get a hand on a copy, but here and there it may still be airing on German television. It is pretty much what I expected and I give it a thumbs-up and positive recommendation for sure.