An impressive documentary opera about the sleeping giants of our times: nuclear power stations. The accident in Japan earlier this year has put the debate about nuclear power on the public agenda again, and with renewed force. But in the German filmmaker Volker Sattel's look at the issue, we aren"t told what we should think. Instead, we are confronted without any further comments with the nuclear power stations and the people who patiently operate the giant control rooms where blinking control panels, incomprehensible machines and enormous reactors are humming with life. Sattel's camera pans silently and attentively around the rooms and continues far into the depths of the storage shafts. Monumental towers, geometrical figures and deserted ruins. The film is fascinatingly beautiful with its panorama images from the power stations, which are full of fascination and threats, tragedy and risk, all in equal measure. With a cool professionalism and enthusiastic expert knowledge, the employees show us around the deadly serious world of big toys, where security is the all-important leitmotif. There is a controlled calmness so close to the red alarm. The film is both frightening, comical and beautiful, and its fascinating choice of reality at times leans on both Jacques Tati and "Star Wars". But there is no reason to panic: everything is under control.

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