Crew

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director: Rudolph Herzog

DOP: Henning Brümmer

Producer: Ilona Grundmann

Narrator: Eva Mattes (German vs)

An Ilona Grundmann Filmproduction for ARTE

tx date: August 19th, 09:50 p.m. on ARTE

 

Description

 

In the spirit of "Dr. Strangelove", the film tells stories such as that of the accidental drop of a nuclear weapon on the house of train conductor Walter Gregg. “We heard a loud boom!”, says his son. “First daddy thought a jet had crashed. But then it turned out that a plane had dropped a nuclear bomb in our backyard". In similar incidents during the Cold War, 40 nuclear weapons were destroyed or lost. Some of them are not accounted for to this day.

Based on Rudolph Herzog's recent critically acclaimed book, „A Short History of Nuclear Folly“, the film uses recently declassified footage from Russia and the U.S. and interviews with eyewitnesses to illustrate some of the strangest and scariest episodes of the Cold War Era – from the filming of a John Wayne movie in a radioactive canyon, to the loss of four hydrogen bombs in Greenland.

 

Press quotes

 

A tale of negligence and hubris that makes one speechless... at other times one can't help but laugh out loud 
—SÜDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG

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A symphony of the absurd 
—SPEKTRUM DER WISSENSCHAFT