Ten Seconds that Shook the World

The American Southwest holds a dark legacy as the place where nuclear weapons were invented and built. Navajo people have long held this place sacred, and continue to fight for a future that transcends historical trauma. This is their story.

On February 28, 2026, the US and Israel launched massive strikes on Iran, claiming an imminent nuclear threat. This film traces how the world reached this point after more than three decades of shadow war over “the bomb”. Israel has tried to block Tehran’s nuclear drive with sabotage, assassinations and cyberwar – from the Stuxnet virus wrecking Natanz centrifuges to the AI-assisted killing of nuclear programme “father” Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, and a commando raid stealing 1.5 tonnes of secret nuclear archive files. Iran insists uranium enrichment is its sovereign right and key to national identity and regional power. As Israel pounded Iran’s nuclear facilities in June 2025 and systematically weakened its allies in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen, nuclear talks continued in Geneva. Iran was edging towards diluting weapons-grade uranium – but Israel wasn’t prepared to wait, and pulled Washington into open war whose global consequences are only now beginning to unfold.

Peter Watkins' global look at the impact of military use of nuclear technology and people's perception of it, as well as a meditation on the inherent bias of the media, and documentaries themselves.

Documentary movie about testing of the largest nuclear weapon in history, the Tsar Bomba. Declassified and made available to the public in 2020.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the threat of a nuclear war between the USA and Russia has diminished, but the threat posed by nuclear weapons and materials on both sides has increased. As nuclear weapons age, they become unstable and begin to behave in unpredictable ways. This film is the first to go behind the scenes in Arzamas-16 - the Russian nuclear city so secret that it has never appeared on any map - and the American nuclear weapons laboratory at Los Alamos, New Mexico, to see Russian and American bomb designers working together to reduce the risk. Exclusive archive material.

Drawing upon eye-witness accounts from survivors and participants in the bombing of Hiroshima, this programme shows how both Japan and the United States are still facing enormous problems in coming to terms with the legacy of that fateful August day.

Scholars and eyewitnesses provide a picture of the 75 hours between the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and document the contradictions, interrelationships, and ambiguities of politics and military strategy in time of war.

Until recently, Europe felt safe under the US nuclear umbrella. But since Russia invaded Ukraine and Donald Trump was re-elected, transatlantic relations have deteriorated. Experts are calling for Europe to focus more on its own nuclear deterrent. But what options do nations on the continent have?

The creation of the atomic bomb did not only unleash a destructive force—it transformed the imagination of the nation that made it, haunting its collective mind and giving rise to dreams and nightmares. PARANOIA CITY is a feature-length (54min) archival essay film exploring the Atomic Age through nuclear test footage, government civil defence films, Cold War propaganda, and 1950s science fiction cinema.

Since 1950, there have been 32 nuclear weapon accidents, known as "Broken Arrows." A Broken Arrow is defined as an unexpected event involving nuclear weapons that result in the accidental launching, firing, detonating, theft or loss of the weapon. To date, six nuclear weapons have been lost and never recovered.Now, recently declassified documents reveal the history and secrecy surrounding the events known as "Broken Arrows". There have been 32 nuclear weapon accidents since 1950. Six of these nuclear weapons have been lost and never recovered. What does this say about our defense system? What does this mean to our threatened environment? What do we do to rectify these monumental "mistakes"? Using spectacular special effects, newly uncovered and recently declassified footage, filmmaker Peter Kuran explores the accidents, incidents and exercises in the secret world of nuclear weapons.

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North Korea has nuclear weapons. How did it manage to get them quietly? Donald Trump is under the impression that as US president he could convince Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, to disarm his nuclear weapons and make peace with South Korea. But how was it possible that one of the poorest countries in the world could acquire the knowledge to produce nuclear-tipped rockets?

This rare documentary is one of the very last efforts from preeminent documentarist/activist Susumu Hani best known for his feature films. This one is a short documentary about the 1945 atomic bombing and its devastating consequences. The film came out of the "10 Foot Movement". A movement organized by the Japan Peace Museum, which mobilized Japanese citizen activists to buy back small segments of film footage of the effects of the atomic bomb from the U.S. National Archives. The film combines recent footage of survivors of the atomic bomb with American archival footage, portraying the sorrow of atomic bomb survivors in the Cold War period.

Between 1952 and 1967, in the largest Tri-Service operation since the D-Day landings, over 20,000 servicemen participated in British Nuclear Weapons Tests. The development of these superweapons bought our place at the world superpower table. The cost in human terms has never been fully calculated nor appreciated, in the blinding light of the bombs a shadow was cast across the lives of so many people. This documentary tells that story in archive footage and candid interviews with the survivors and their children. Its release is being supported with a collection of art from the ‘Shadow of the Bomb’ exhibition. Inspired by experiences and stories of veterans and their children this thought provoking art sets the scene for the open honest revelations in the film.

When the Cold War ended, worry about nuclear weapons receded. But has the nuclear threat really diminished? Join Bud Ryan on a personal and global journey to discover what the bomber can learn from the bombed, and what our prospects look like for finally living in a nuclear-free world. Features interviews with bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz, authors Gar Alperovitz and Jonathan Schell, and many more.

J. Robert Oppenheimer and other key figures involved in the decision to drop the first atomic bomb discuss their motivations in this NBC News documentary. Originally produced and televised in 1965, two decades after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was re-released in 2023 with an epilogue by Michael Beschloss, NBC News Presidential Historian.

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Based on testimony by Ethel’s brother, David Greenglass, the Rosenbergs are arrested by the FBI. The couple is accused of passing secret information about the atomic bomb to the USSR. Though the Rosenbergs maintain their innocence from the start, the media and public opinion seem to have condemned them from day one. The trial does nothing to change this and ends in a death sentence. On Friday June 19, 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are executed in the electric chair. Julius first, then Ethel. 30 years later, the truth finally comes out. Declassified FBI archives reveal that Ethel was not guilty of being a spy; she was merely married to one. Julius did indeed commit espionage for the Soviet Union, though primarily as a recruiter, nothing at all like the fictional James Bond. This documentary, made entirely of archival footage and animated illustrations, offers a tale of espionage as well as a complex family tragedy.

In 1973 Alister Barry joined the crew of a protest boat (The Fri) to Mururoa Atoll, where the French Government were testing nuclear weapons. Barry records the assembly of the crew, the long journey from Northland, and their reception in the test zone; when The Fri was boarded and impounded by French military he had to hide his camera in a barrel of oranges.

The birth of the atomic bomb changed the world forever. In the years before the Manhattan project, a weapon of such power was not even remotely imaginable to most people on earth. And yet, with war comes new inventions. New ways of destroying the enemy. New machines to wipe out human life. The advent of nuclear weapons not only brought an end to the largest conflict in history, but also ushered in an atomic age and a defining era of "big science". However, with the world now gripped by nuclear weapons, we exist constantly on the edge of mankind's total destruction.