Filmmakers from Germany, Canada, Spain and USA including “Atomic Clean-Up Veteran” Paul Griego from New Mexico presenting their films at the 15th Rio de Janeiro International Uranium Film Festival.
Those who followed the successful Netflix miniseries “Radioactive Emergency” will soon be able to watch more films on the theme of radioactive risks at the Cinematheque of MAM Rio. From May 21st to 30th, 2026, the 15th edition of the International Uranium Film Festival of Rio de Janeiro (IUFF), the best-known Atomic Age Cinema Fest in the world, will screen 31 films from 18 countries, addressing all issues of nuclear energy and radioactive risks.
The festival features special sessions to remember the 15th anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the 40th anniversary of Chernobyl, the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombings in Spain, and the 80th anniversary of the first atomic tests in 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 US-American civilian, worked on the attempted „cleanup” of the Islands.
The atomic bomb explosions had 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 and his daughter Sophie, who will present the film “Too Late to Learn.“ Most of the films are Brazilian or Latin American premieres. “Too Late to Learn” is a world premiere.
Young German multimedia poetry artist Maja Hohenberg will present her poetic documentary Albraum (Radioactive Tailings Nightmare) (Albraum), about the huge uranium mine „Wismut“ in East Germany that secretly supplied the radioactive explosive for the Soviet atomic bombs during the cold war.
Filmmaker Zoe Gordon comes to Rio from Canada to present her film “The Moth,” co-directed by Indigenous artist Michelle Derosier of the Anishinaabe people. The short fiction is based on real events like the construction of a nuclear waste repository in Canada.
Also confirmed is Spanish documentary filmmaker José Herrera Plaza, who lives in the region where B-52 bomber crashed during the Cold War, on January 17, 1966. The plane was carrying four hydrogen bombs. Two H-bombs failed to deploy their parachutes and shattered on impact, contaminating the air and soil with plutonium and uranium around the coastal village of Palomares, in Andalusia. His film “Broken Arrow: Nuclear Accident in Palomares“ tells the story.
There were thousands of nuclear weapons tests, both atmospheric and underground, conducted by the USA, Soviet Union, China, France, United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, and North Korea. To remember this nuclear madness, the festival opens with Oscar-nominated movie „Them!“, a remarkable classic movie that, as early as 1954, criticized the first atomic bomb tests like no other Hollywood film before.
“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 exciting film festival, with surprising and revealing films, accompanied by good conversation,” says Uranium Film Festival ececutive director Márcia Gomes de Oliveira.
Festival website https://uraniumfilmfestival.org/en
PROGRAM
https://uraniumfilmfestival.org/pt-br/rio-2026-programacao
