Frankie Fenton: Last News

Dennis Harvey Film CriticAmong the many social movements that arose in the 1960s and ’70s, one just about everyone on the liberal spectrum could agree on was anti-“nuke.” Hiroshima and Nagasaki left behind a lingering horror at the ways technological advancement might be turned to mass destruction. Power plant accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl seemed to confirm fears that this energy source’s risks outweighed its benefits.

Christopher Vourlias Irish director Frankie Fenton explores the movement of global activists who believe nuclear power is our best hope to fight climate change in “Atomic Hope: Inside the Pro-Nuclear Movement,” which world premieres May 3 at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival. Paris-based documentary specialist Java Films, which is handling world sales on the film, has given Variety exclusive access to the trailer.Intimately filmed across more than a decade, “Atomic Hope” follows the small movement of nuclear-energy advocates from Japan to Switzerland, America to Australia, as they try to win over a skeptical public – despite stiff opposition from traditional environmentalists and other interest groups.Fenton admits he was as much a nuclear-energy skeptic as the next when he began researching the film.