The City of Pripyat plays a very important role in the story. In just a short glimpse it clearly illustrates how the Soviet government treated its own people. The Fabijoniškės district in Vilnius built around the period of the actual catastrophe in the late 1980s was chosen as an ideal location.

“It reflects the idea of Pripyat, of an idealised Soviet city of the future, quite wonderfully. Fabijoniškės is a symmetrical district, which is great for the current trend of translating the architecture of that era for the big screen: the forms are aggressive, there’s a lot of concrete and greyness,” says Jonas Špokas, CEO of Baltic Locations, the company that managed the filming locations for Chernobyl. The district was chosen because the crew wanted to show a young town where old trees couldn’t surround the apartment blocks.