Once the Dust Settles (2020)

Directed by: John Appel | 85 minutes | documentary

First there is the disaster. Then the rubble. Then a beginning of a new beginning.

In the Dutch documentary ‘Once the Dust Settles’ we visit three places that have been hit hard by disasters. The Italian village of Amatrice was hit by a devastating earthquake in August 2016. In 1986, a reactor at the local nuclear power plant exploded in Chernobyl, Ukraine. The historic Syrian city of Aleppo has been the scene of heavy fighting between the Syrian army and armed insurgents since 2012. We now know how it came to be, but what about these places and their inhabitants in 2020?

‘Once the Dust Settles’ successively looks at the situation in Amatrice, Chernobyl and Aleppo. Every now and then some archive images pass by, but most of the time we stay among the rubble. In Amatrice the local sexton annex village historian leads us around, in Chernobyl and neighboring Pripyat we go on a tourist tour and in Aleppo we get text and explanation from 2 guides. Not only do these guides know everything about the places, but they were also there when the disasters took place.

The result is a documentary that captivates from start to finish. That is mainly due to the images – the totally destroyed Amatrice, the ghost town of Pripyat, the slowly recovering Aleppo – but certainly also to the stories. In Chernobyl, the guide is a technician at the plant at the time, who saw many of his colleagues die. For the guides from Aleppo, the disaster is too fresh to tell about it without emotion. And we sympathize.

In ‘Once the Dust Settles’ we also see where each culture takes its solace from. For Amatrice it is faith, the Ukrainians bask in a melancholy fatalism, the Syrians get it out of pride in their city and a (still shaky) faith in the future. This makes this documentary, despite the heavy subject matter, a reasonably hopeful film.

With ‘Once the Dust Settles’ veteran John Appel adds yet another fine documentary to his oeuvre. A documentary that has an eye for detail, that respects its subjects and in which every image carries meaning. A documentary about disasters, fate, art as medicine, and about that wonderfully resilient being called man.