Fukushima Now is an immersive VR documentary that takes audiences to the heart of Fukushima to meet the survivors living in the shadow of the crisis today. Using volumetric capture & photogrammetry technology, the project transports viewers into an experience that explores the disaster and the lasting impact it's had on communities and the environment. We reveal how a community endures in the aftermath of trauma and recalls memories of homes they can longer return to. Through local voices, the experience also examines the meaning of home and how it may be redefined in the face of disaster.

 

 

USA, 2022, Directors: Michael Dwyer, Chuck Gomez, Producer: Michael Dwyer, Documentary, English, 20 min.

 

Tomiko Morimoto West watched from her schoolyard as a low-flying B-29 dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, killing her mother and other family members. Thirteen-year-old Tomiko searched the devastated city for the body of her grandfather to save him the injustice of a mass burial, cremating him under mountain tree branches. She went on to marry an American GI, become a professor at Vassar College, and at age 90 has only one wish: that world leaders work together for global peace. 

 

Blowing in the Wind

New Zealand, 2024, Director / Producer: Fiona Amundsen, Producer: Sylvia Frain, Documentary, English, 15 min.

 

'Blowing in the Wind' explores present-day activist efforts to amend the ‘Radiation Exposure Compensation Act’ to include Guåhan (Guam) as a jurisdiction of ‘downwinders’ resulting from American nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands. The film’s primary focus is military veteran Robert Celestial who founded and fronts the Pacific Association of Radiation Survivors group based in Guåhan. This group are the primary activists advocating for Guåhan’s recognition as a ‘downwinder’ since 2004. Celestial—who is present via only his voice and the sense of an unfolding back and forth conversation—takes viewers on a journey that covers his participation in building the Runit Dome, disbelief, fighting for retribution and hope. The film uses present-day filming and archival footage. The latter includes material from an informational Civil Defence film on the dangers of radioactive fallout; along with footage from two United States Atomic Energy Commission and University of Washington (Laboratory of Radiation Biology) research trips to Bikini, as well as US Air Force documentation of Marshall Islands testing. The footage functions to corroborate the experiences that Celestial speaks of while also alluding to how scientific knowledge was privileged over human life. The present-day filming includes abstract imagery of chemiluminescence (a scientific process used in DNA testing) and flashing lights. This imagery creates a kind of embodied reflective contemplation, and is also suggestive of the invisible poisoning that is ionizing radiation. It also privileges opacity and invisibility meaning the visuality is not necessarily obviously ‘nuclear’. As such, this film’s central focus concerns questioning how to socio-ethically image and bear witness to the realities of what it means to live on lands and oceans contaminated by nuclear fallout. There is a focus on transgenerational justice concerning the history of US nuclear testing in the Pacific and the ongoing quest for nuclear atonement.

 

Half-Life
 

China, 2024, Director: Chonghu Li, Documentary, Chinese, 15 min

 

In Japan, August 2023, countless harmful substances are discharged into the sea along with nuclear contaminated water. A power plant worker involved in the discharge process frequently faces ostracism and violent harassment from those around him. Unable to bear the humiliation any longer, he decides to end it all at home. However, when he wakes up from his dream, he realizes that he is actually a government employee. Everything that had happened seemed like just a dream. Due to the irresponsible discharge actions by the local authorities, a tidal wave of public opinion has manifested as piles of complaints and protest materials. He is forced to work overtime to "handle" this public opinion and has been working continuously for several days. Just as he finishes "handling" the last complaint and is about to go home, an unexpected event occurs.

 

 

USA, 2024, Director: Jeff Gipe, Producer: Dan de Jesus, Documentary, 55 min.

 

In the suburbs of Denver, the U.S. secretly manufactured thousands of atomic weapons, leaving behind a toxic legacy that will persist for generations. The Rocky Flats plant produced a staggering 70,000 atomic bombs, each serving as a “trigger” for thermonuclear warheads. Concealed by government secrecy, the plant's fires, leaks, and illicit dumping of nuclear waste contaminated the Denver area with long-lived radioactive toxins. A major—and highly visible—plutonium fire sparked a decade of mass protests, culminating in an unprecedented FBI raid that ultimately shuttered the plant. Today, the radioactive legacy of Rocky Flats continues to threaten public health, yet surprisingly few people are aware the plant ever existed. Through powerful testimonials and extraordinary archival media, Half-Life of Memory exposes Rocky Flats' dark past and enduring impact, prompting critical reflection on the implications of the nation’s renewed nuclear weapons buildup and ongoing construction of a new "trigger" factory.

 

 

USA, 2023, Director: Nathan Fitch, Producer: Angela Edward, Documentary, English, 12 min.

 

In Exile is a short film that explores the US nuclear legacy in the Pacific through the lens of members of the Marshallese community in Arkansas. The Marshallese were told their islands in Micronesia were essential for the good of mankind for Operation Crossroads, a series of nuclear tests in Bikini Atoll commencing in 1946. In a highly choreographed scene photographed by an array of military cameras, the Marshallese begin the process of leaving their home islands for an exile that has now lasted 77 years. They could not know that their islands would be vaporized, their waters poisoned, and their bodies used as test subjects by the US government. In Exile encapsulates this complex history in the scene of a Nuclear Remembrance Day event. Every year the Marshallese revisit this traumatic event in an emotional scene that encompasses an often overlooked part of American history.

 

In Our Hands
 

Italy, 2024, Director: Camillo Sancisi, Animation, English, 5 min,

 

In 1983, a Lieutenant in command at an early warning base receives an alarm from the satellite defense system. Five nuclear warheads are directed towards his territory. The attack is unexpected, but the data appears reliable. The protocol is clear: should he initiate a deadly retaliation? Based on a true story.

 

 

Ukraine, 2024, Director: Pavlo Cherepin, Producer: Egor Olesov, Antje Boehmert, Katerina Mizina, Documentary, English, French, German, Ukrainian, 52 minutes

 

The documentary follows three employees of Ukrainian nuclear power plants and tells of the consequences of the Russian occupation. Of fear, illegal interrogations and torture. For IAEA chief Rafael Grossi, the conditions under which the staff have to work are the biggest cause for concern. Working on the film evoked personal memories for director Pavlo Cherepin, who learned the word evacuation early on as a child after the Chornobyl reactor accident.

 

 

Germany / Taiwan, 2022, Director: Patrik Thomas, Producer: The Random Collective, Arthouse Docu-Fiction, Chinese, 25 min.

 

As one of the many nuclear powered countries, Taiwan is constantly facing the issue on how to deal with its nuclear waste. After decades of controversial governmental decisions, a new solution seems possible: a citizen-powered decentralized storage strategy. In the late 1970s, Taiwans government decided to store parts of its nuclear waste on Orchid Island, 65km off Taiwan’s southeast coast, home of the Yami people who lived for centuries as an isolated tribe. Being tricked by the government, the tribal chief signed a contract to built a “fish cannery“, which turned out to be a nuclear waste storage site. After more than 30 years of protest by the yami people, the government passes a new decision to solve to problem of Orchid Island with a new decentralised storage strategy. The film accompanies two governmental employees with their daily struggle of redistributing the nuclear waste to all Taiwanese citizens.

 

 

New Zealand, 2024, Director and Producer: Bridget Sutherland, Documentary, English, 9 min.

 

How many artists question technology, especially military technology?

‘Tempest’ is named for the nuclear industrial storm imagined inside the concrete silo where the NZ artist Peter Roche staged his final installation ‘Asylum’, a daring collection of works that speak to the nuclear uncanny and the dangers underscoring our new radioactive world. This invasion of the military into our lives provides the context for much of Peter’s work, spanning his performances from the 1970’s through to his later light and kinetic sculptures. However, it was not until ‘Asylum’, 2016, Peter’s final public installation in an abandoned concrete silo, that he confronted the nuclear threat head on. Commanding works with titles such as Meltdown, Flotilla and Tempest underscore the dangers of nuclear military technology and the vulnerability of a culture so entangled in its manufacture and the global reach of its destructive toxic legacy. ‘Tempest’ is dedicated to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.

 

 

USA, 2024, Director: Wendy Garrett, Executive Producer: David Raubach, Producer: Matt Payne,     Line Producer: Tanya Ruby, Documentary, English, 56 min.

 

In 1942, the United States launched the Manhattan Project to develop the first atomic bomb, with Dr. Robert Wilson among its brilliant scientists. Disillusioned by the destruction, he later pioneered Proton Therapy in 1946, a groundbreaking cancer treatment used worldwide today.

The Atomic Bowl: Football at Ground Zero & The Forgotten Bomb

USA, 2024, Director Greg Mitchell, Documentary, 

 

A timely new documentary by an award-winning writer/director on the disturbing and long-forgotten 1946 U.S. military all-star game in Nagasaki where 80,000 civilians had perished just weeks earlier--and the vital lessons and warnings for today as nuclear dangers proliferate. Produced by Lyn Goldfarb. Narrated by Peter Coyote.

 

https://gregmitchell.substack.com/p/the-atomic-bowl-football-on-a-killing
 

 

 

France, 2024, Director: Cédric Picaud, Producer: Vincent Gazaigne, Documentary, French / English, 53 minutes.

 

In the desert plain of the North-East, Damien wants to save his village from a spell. In 1957, France settled secretly the Polygon in the forbidden hills to test nuclear bomb detonation systems using hazardous materials. Top engineers from Paris created and ruled the site. Local workers built, maintained, secured it and were kept silent. Ten years after the Polygon’s closure, Damien wants to know how much the Polygon has polluted environment and poisoned minds.

 

 

Portugal, 2024, Director: Daniele Grosso, Animation, English, 6 min

 

On the 24th of June, 1958 the philosopher and anti-nuclear activist Günther Anders was flying to Japan to take part in the Fourth World Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs and for Disarmament. He recollected this experience in his book "The Man on the Bridge: Diary from Hiroshima and Nagasaki“.