Countdown to zero by Lucy Walker

Shown in Special Screening, Countdown to Zero by Lucy Walker takes you to the heart of the global nuclear dossier. After Draquila by Sabina Guzzanti and Inside Job by Charles Ferguson, this is the third documentary dealing with a current affairs event. It will be presented at 7:30 pm, in the Salle du Soixantième.

Nuclear weapons, both a diplomatic weapon and a weapon of mass destruction, potentially place the planet  in a fragile balance. Nine countries have it, and others want it whatever the price. According to Lucy Walker, the time has come to free ourselves from it: “If we don’t want other countries to have the bomb, how can we justify having it ourselves? […] If Iran gets the bomb, how many other countries will do the same? We only have two choices: a world where no one has the nuclear bomb, or a world in which corrupt States and non-state players possess it. Which of these worlds would you prefer to live in?” 

The first film by Lucy Walker presented in Cannes, this feature film calls for global nuclear disarmament. Countdown to Zero records comments made by numerous experts in this area. Among the cast members, we can find leaders of the past and of today, from former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to the former head of the Soviet Republic Mikhail Gorbachev. Lucy Walker also interviewed journalists and academics, such as Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani reporter and academic who specialises in nuclear weapons in the Middle East, and Frank von Hippel, a nuclear physicist and former White House advisor for national security.

TK