Rio de Janeiro - The International Uranium Film Festival of Rio de Janeiro (IUFF) announces its 15th edition. As in previous years, the world's best-known Atomic Age Cinema Fest will take place at the Cinematheque of the Modern Art Museum (MAM Rio) from May 21st to 30th, 2026, with free admission.

The audience can expect an incredible and carefully selected program with 31 films from 18 countries addressing all nuclear issues. The film fest includes special sessions to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the 40th anniversary of Chernobyl, the 60th anniversary of the atomic bomb accident in Spain, and the 80th anniversary of the first atomic tests on the Pacific islands. 

On July 25, 1946, an atomic bomb was detonated 27 meters below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, at Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands. Between 1946 and 1958, the US conducted 67 nuclear tests with a total power equivalent to more than 7,000 times the Hiroshima bomb. In 1979, 21 years after the last test, Paul Griego, a young American civilian, worked on the attempt to „clean-up" the area. The tests left a legacy of radioactive contamination, not only among the islanders, but also for those who worked on the "cleanup" and their descendants. The audience in Rio will have the opportunity to meet Paul, who will present the world premiere of the US documentary "Too Late to Learn" on May 29, 2026.

Also in Rio will be young German awarded poet-artist, Maja Hohenberg, to present her poetic documentary "Albraum" (Nightmare of Radioactive Waste), about one of the worlds biggest uranium mine in East Germany that supplied uranium for Soviet atomic bombs. Another confirmed presence is that of Spanish documentary filmmaker, José Herrera Plaza, who lives in the region where an US tanker plane collided over the coastal village of Palomares in Andalusia with a B-52 bomber during the Cold War, on January 17, 1966. The plane was carrying four hydrogen bombs. Two of the four bombs failed to deploy their parachutes. They shattered on impact, contaminating the air and soil around Palomares with plutonium and uranium. Parts of the region are still contaminated until today.

Another nuclear threat and source of radioactive contamination during the Cold War were the thousands of atmospheric and underground nuclear weapons tests conducted by the USA, the Soviet Union, China, France, Great Britain, India, Pakistan and North Korea. To remember this nuclear madness we open the festival this year with a remarkable Hollywood classic that already in 1954 criticized the first atomic Bomb tests like no other before. The Oscar-nominated movie „Them!“.  "Its gigantic ants, mutated by the fallout left behind in the aftermath of the Trinity atom bomb test, represent the potentially disastrous consequences of nuclear technology. Them! deserves to be recognised as a towering giant of the genre“, states the British Film Institute.

We wish all participants an engaging film festival, with surprising and revealing films, accompanied by good conversation!