Sixth Annual Uranium Film Festival Returns to Rio at the MAM

By Chesney Hearst, Senior Contributing Reporter

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Uranium Film Festival will return to Rio de Janeiro for its sixth edition beginning on May 20th. Running through the 29th at the Museum of Modern Art Rio de Janeiro (MAM), the festival will feature fifty films from twenty-two countries. Additionally, twelve filmmakers and producers from eight countries will make appearances during the festival.

The films included in the festival range from short and medium-length fiction and documentary films to full-length documentaries and feature films. During this edition, the festival will feature films observing the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear accident and the 5-year anniversary of Fukushima.

Founded in Rio de Janeiro in 2010, the festival has gone on to be hosted in additional cities including Berlin, Mumbai, and most recently in Hollywood, California, in April.

“During these six years, the festival is growing more and more,” said festival director Norbert G. Suchanek in a released statement. “No other festival in Brazil has held exhibitions in over thirty cities in six countries, ” added executive director of the festival, Marcia Gomes.

This year in Rio de Janeiro, the festival will open with an homage to, “Abrigo Nuclear” (Nuclear Shelter), the first Brazilian film about nuclear contamination. Directed by Roberto Pires, the 1981 film imagines a world where humans are forced to live in underground shelters after atomic waste has made the surface uninhabitable.

The thirty-minute documentary, “Bahia Sci-Fi,” directed by Pires’ son Petrus Pires will screen before the film and following the screening of “Abrigo Nuclear,” Petrus Pires will host a live talk with the Conservador-Chefe of the Modern Art Museum Rio de Janeiro and Professor of Cinema at the University PUC-Rio, Hernini Heffner and some of the original actors who appeared in “Abrigo Nuclear.”

Additional guests during the festival will include filmmakers Roberto Fernández of Argentina, Wain Fimeri of Australia, Miguel Silveira of Brazil/USA, Peter Anthony of Denmark, Marcus Schwenzel, Rainer Ludwigs, and Reinhart Brüning of Germany, Alessandro Tesei of Italy, José Herrera Plaza of Spain, Tetyana Chernyavska of Ukraine, of Missy Hernandez of the United States, and Tineke van Veen, The Netherlands.

The festival will close on Sunday, May 29th with a screening of the 2014 film, “The Man Who Saved the World.” Directed by Peter Anthony of Denmark, the docudrama stars Kevin Costner as commander-in-chief Stanislav Petrov and focuses on the tensions between Russia and the United States during the lead up to an imagined World War III. “I often get the chance to play a hero. But Stanislav is a true real-life hero,” said Costner of the role.

The screening will be followed by the festival’s award ceremony, which will include the General Consul of Switzerland Christophe Vauthey and Brazilian Ex-Ambassador and United Nations High Representative for Disarmament Affairs Sérgio Duarte.

For more information, a complete listing of the films and schedule of the screening times, see the Uranium Film Festival website.

What: Uranium Film Festival Sixth Edition
When: May 20th through May 29th
Where: Museum of Modern Art Rio de Janeiro (MAM), Av. Infante Dom Henrique, 85 – Parque do Flamengo
Entrance: R$8 per screening. Festival Passes are also available by emailing [email protected].