Uranium Film Festival in Window Rock: incredible, awesome and healing

IUFF Honorary Lifetime Achievement Award Winners 2024 presented at Navajo Nation Museum Window Rock

The two-day International Uranium Film Festival at the Navajo Nation Museum in Window Rock was a wonderful and powerful event. That is the overwhelming opinion of the audience. Navajo actor and activist Norman Patrick Brown says: „The Uranium Film Festival was incredible, awesome, and healing for many of those on the front lines against the front end of the nuclear fuel cycle, as well as the grassroots community members who were targeted by the federal government and insane nuclear corporations for the yellow monster URANIUM. Many non-indigenous allies from the international community were present as well as Dine elders, grassroots activists, organizers and warriors fighting against this yellow monster. May we stand strong together to begin healing our sacred lands and people impacted by decades of years of uranium mining and processing.“

„The Window Rock Uranium Film Festival was much more than just watching nuclear films, it was also a big gathering and platform to make friends and allies“, says festival director Norbert G. Suchanek. And he adds: “Window Rock is the birthplace of the Uranium Film Festival. We will do our best to ensure that the festival returns 2025 to Window Rock.” The Window Rock Uranium Film Festival ended last Friday, March 8th with the closing ceremony and surprises. This year's winners of the IUFF Honorary Lifetime Achievement Award were announced at the closing ceremony.

Since 2017 the International Uranium Film Festival (IUFF) honors special personalities of the „Atomic Age“ with its Honorary Lifetime Achievement Award. The 2024 winners are Navajo activist Anna Rondon and German filmmaker & activist Claus Biegert.

Navajo activist Anna Marie Rondon is Executive Director New Mexico Social Justice and Equity Institute. Claus Biegert born in 1947 in Murnau, Bavaria, Germany, is journalist, filmmaker, founder of the Nuclear Free-Future Award and co-organizer of the legendary World Uranium Hearing in Salzburg, Austria, in 1992. Both, Anna and Claus, have been working tirelessly for decades to denounce the deadly risks of uranium mining and its legacy. Keep uranium in the ground.

After Window Rock the Uranium Film Festival is now traveling across the USA. Next IUFFs are held in March in Tucson (AZ), Austin (TX), Ashville (NC), Chicago (IL), Spokane (WA), Vancouver in Canada, Seattle (WA), Olympia (WA), Portland (OR), Salem (OR), Santa Barbara (CA) and Las Vegas (NV). https://uraniumfilmfestival.org/en/usacanada-2024-program

About the Festival
 
For 13 years, the International Uranium Film Festval (IUFF) has presented cutting edge films on nuclear issues in nine countries around the world, including Germany, Brazil, India, Canada, the United States, Portugal, Jordan, Denmark and Norway. Founded in 2010 by the Brazilian social scientist Márcia Gomes de Oliveira and the German environmental journalist Norbert G. Suchanek, the International Uranium Film Festival (IUFF) is dedicated to all nuclear topics and the entire nuclear fuel chain, from uranium mining to nuclear waste, from nuclear war to nuclear accidents.Since 2011, the festival has been held not only in Rio de Janeiro annually and in Berlin but also in several other countries and cities such Lisbon, New Delhi, Montreal, New York and Washington DC. It has been twice, 2013 and 2018, in Window Rock, ABQ and Santa Fe. Since 2016, when the International Uranium Film Festival was hosted at the famous Raleigh Studios for the first time in Los Angeles it is also known as Atomic Age Cinema Fest.

About the Award

The festival's Life Time Achievement Award is a trophy created by Brazilian waste artist Getúlio Damado. Getúlio makes the award from waste material he finds on the streets of Santa Teresa. He also uses broken watches to remember the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the first US atomic bombs. When the bombs exploded over the two cities in August, 1945, all watches stopped.

Former Honorary Lifetime Achievement Award Winners

Navajo actor and activist Norman Patrick Brown: