Uncovering Fukushima(2022)

Fukushima: Is Nuclear Power Safe?(en)

Six months after the explosions at the Fukushima nuclear plant and the release of radiation there, Professor Jim Al-Khalili sets out to discover whether nuclear power is safe. He begins in Japan, where he meets some of the tens of thousands of people who have been evacuated from the exclusion zone. He travels to an abandoned village just outside the zone to witness a nuclear clean-up operation. Jim draws on the latest scientific findings from Japan and from the previous explosion at Chernobyl to understand how dangerous the release of radiation is likely to be and what that means for our trust in nuclear power.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki: 75 Years Later(en)

Hiroshima and Nagasaki: 75 Years Later is told entirely from the first-person perspective of leaders, physicists, soldiers and survivors.

Inside Chernobyl's Mega Tomb(en)

Documentary which follows the construction of a trailblazing 36,000-tonne steel structure to entomb the ruins of the nuclear power plant destroyed in the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

Secrets of Egypt's Lost Queen(en)

Move over, King Tut: There's a new pharaoh on the scene. A team of top archaeologists and forensics experts revisits the story of Hatshepsut, the woman who snatched the throne dressed as a man and declared herself ruler. Despite her long and prosperous reign, her record was all but eradicated from Egyptian history in a mystery that has long puzzled scholars. But with the latest research effort captured in this program, history is about to change.

Deadly Experiments(en)

Documentary which exposes the truth of how 'human guinea pigs' were used in government-funded radiation experiments without their knowledge or consent. It uncovers a series of breaches of ethical codes as scientists pursued military, scientific or medical knowledge. Includes archive footage.

Inside Chernobyl with Ben Fogle(en)

Ben Fogle spends a week living inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, gaining privileged access to the doomed Control Room 4 where the disaster first began to unfold.

The Horses of Fukushima(ja)

Fukushima's Minami-soma has a ten-centuries-long tradition of holding the Soma Nomaoi ("chasing wild horses") festival to celebrate the horse's great contribution to human society. Following the meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in the wake of the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami, local people were forced to flee the area. Rancher Shinichiro Tanaka returned to find his horses dead or starving, and refused to obey the government's orders to kill them. While many racehorses are slaughtered for horsemeat, his horses had been subjected to radiation and were inedible. Yoju Matsubayashi, whose "Fukushima: Memories of the Lost Landscape" is one of the most impressive documentaries made immediately after the disaster, spent the summer of 2011 helping Tanaka take care of his horses. In documenting their rehabilitation, he has produced a profound meditation on these animals who live as testaments to the tragic bargain human society made with nuclear power.

Chernobyl and Fukushima: The Lesson(en)

Chernobyl 1986. A nuclear reactor exploded, spewing out massive quantities of radiation into the atmosphere. Within days, the pollution had spread across Europe. Living on land contaminated with radioactivity would be a life-changing ordeal for the people of Belarus, but also for the Sami reindeer herders of central Norway. It even affected the Gaels of the distant Hebrides. Five years ago there was a meltdown at the Fukushima reactor, and thousands of Japanese people found their homes, fields and farms irradiated, just as had happened in Europe. This international documentary, filmed in Belarus, Japan, the lands of Norway's Sami reindeer herders and in the Outer Hebrides, poses the question: what lessons have we learned?

Reflection(ja)

Eerie images of landscapes after the Fukushima nuclear disaster shot on black and white 8mm.

After the Big One: Nuclear War on the Prairies(en)

This film deals straightforwardly with the consequences of a nuclear attack for the Canadian Prairies. The Prairies are singled out because of their proximity to huge stockpiles of intercontinental ballistic missiles located in North Dakota. Scenes include a visit to a missile base and to an emergency government bunker in Manitoba. A doctor, a farmer and a civil defence coordinator provide different perspectives on nuclear war. Although the film focuses on one region, it provides a model for people everywhere who would like to know more about their own situation but don't know what questions to ask.

Amateur's Riot(ja)

Amateur's Riot (Shirōto no ran) is a Japanese association of activists, committed to the living conditions of the poor people (binbōnin) in Tōkyō. The association was founded in 2005 by Matsumoto Hajime, Yamashita Hikaru, Futatsugi Shin, Mochitsuki Rui and Ogasawara Keita. The protagonists of Shiroto no Ran played an important role in the anti-nuclear demonstrations that appeared in response to the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe.

Haru Wo Tsugeru Machi(ja)

A documentary about the people of Hirono, a city located 20 km away from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. Immediately after the Great East Japan Earthquake, the whole town was forced to evacuate. In 2019, 80% of the population at the time of the earthquake is back in town.

La Dernière Meute(fr)

Charcot: Secret Poles(fr)

The adventures and exploits of Jean-Baptiste Charcot (1867-1936), an intrepid scientist and explorer who laid the foundations of modern oceanography.

L'Aventure Rosetta : Aux origines de la vie(fr)

It was November 12, 2014, at 5:03pm. Humanity had just accomplished a feat that will forever mark its history. Philae, the miniature laboratory integrated into the Rosetta probe, landed softly on comet 67P Chourioumov-Guérassimenko, better known as Tchouri. The culmination of a project decided twenty-one years earlier, in 1993, by the European Space Agency - the first to display the immense ambition of landing on one of these bodies made of ice and dust, archives of the solar system's infancy. To achieve this, it took years of preparation, a decade-long flight, six billion kilometers flown, thousands of scientists and engineers involved... Astrophysicist Anny-Chantal Levasseur-Regourd sums it all up: "From this mission, we hope - and can reasonably expect - to understand the origin of the solar system and how life appeared on Earth.

The Conqueror: Hollywood Fallout(en)

The story of one of the great environmental disasters to befall the United States, and the terrible movie that helped bring the catastrophe to light.

NUKED(en)

The US detonated 67 nuclear weapons over the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands during the Cold War, the consequences of which still reverberate down four generations to today. "NUKED," is a timely new feature documentary focussing on the human victims of the nuclear arms race, tracing the displaced Bikinian's ongoing struggle for justice and survival even as climate change poses a new existential threat. Using carefully restored archival footage to resurrect contemporaneous islanders’ voices and juxtaposing these with the full, awesome fury of the nuclear detonations, NUKED starkly contrasts the official record with the lived experience of the Bikinians themselves, serving as an important counterpoint to this summer’s Oppenheimer.

Mothers of Fukushima: Eiko & Yoshiko(ja)

Eiko Kanno is a 79 year old grandmother whose life has been completely changed by the nuclear disaster in Fukushima. Her life should have been with her grandchildren but because of the disaster which caused her entire village of Iitate to be evacuated. She now lives by herself in temporary housing. Yoshiko Kanno and her extended family are very important to her changed life. Yoshiko Kanno lost her parents in the evacuation and she found herself living next door to Eiko Kanno. They entertain themselves by telling jokes to each other like a comedic duo. They now live together.

Nuclear Rescue 911: Broken Arrows & Incidents(en)

Since 1950, there have been 32 nuclear weapon accidents, known as "Broken Arrows." A Broken Arrow is defined as an unexpected event involving nuclear weapons that result in the accidental launching, firing, detonating, theft or loss of the weapon. To date, six nuclear weapons have been lost and never recovered.Now, recently declassified documents reveal the history and secrecy surrounding the events known as "Broken Arrows". There have been 32 nuclear weapon accidents since 1950. Six of these nuclear weapons have been lost and never recovered. What does this say about our defense system? What does this mean to our threatened environment? What do we do to rectify these monumental "mistakes"? Using spectacular special effects, newly uncovered and recently declassified footage, filmmaker Peter Kuran explores the accidents, incidents and exercises in the secret world of nuclear weapons.

Nuclear Savage: The Islands of Secret Project 4.1(en)

A shocking political exposé, and an intimate ethnographic portrait of Pacific Islanders struggling for survival, dignity, and justice after decades of top-secret human radiation experiments conducted on them by the U.S. government.