Silent Bombs: All for the Motherland

The exciting story of the splitting of the atom, a scientific breakthrough of incalculable importance that ushered in the nuclear age, has a dark side: the many events in which people were exposed to radiation, both intentionally and by accident.

It starts with a live radio broadcast from the Bikini Atoll a few days before it is annihilated by a nuclear test. Shows great footage from these times and tells the story of the US Navy Sailors who were exposed to radioactive fallout. One interviewed sailor suffered grotesquely swollen limbs and he is shown being interviewed with enormous left arm and hand.

A German Documentary about the “village of friendship” that was created by American Veteran George Mizo to help the Vietnamese kids suffering from the Vietnam War.

In 1954, the United States tested 6 hydrogen bombs on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. Numerous Japanese fishing boats were operating in surrounding waters, and their crews were exposed to radioactive fallout. But the Japanese government has acknowledged the cases of just 23 crewmembers. Now, scientists from Hiroshima have shed light on facts that had been buried for 60 years.

Filmed mostly with drones, this short film shows what happened before, during and after the devastating earthquake that struck Mexico City in September 19, 2017. Through sound recordings of the rescue operations, accounts from survivors and journalistic chronicles, this film reflects the uncertainty and bewilderment caused by the quake.

Sergey Dvortsevoy makes his international debut with this astonishingly intimate portrait of a nomadic family on the Kazakh plains. Several scenes in this slow, elegant film betray a certain dry humor - a child devouring the last of a bowl of yogurt and then crying; a cow getting its head stuck in a pail; and a woman singing to herself, accompanied by her snoring husband. Other scenes capture the nomads' hardscrabble lives - drunken herdsmen in the grips of existential despair, growling dogs, and a camel enduring a rather grim septum piercing. By the end of the film, the family pulls up stakes and herds its sundry four-legged beasts - camels, cattle, goats, dogs, and horses - to a more fertile plain. This film was screened at the 1999 Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival.

For months, the FBI have been investigating Russian interference in the American presidential elections. ZEMBLA is investigating another explosive dossier concerning Trump’s involvement with the Russians: Trump’s business and personal ties to oligarchs from the former Soviet Union. Powerful billionaires suspected of money laundering and fraud, and of having contacts in Moscow and with the mafia. What do these relationships say about Trump and why does he deny them? How compromising are these dubious business relationships for the 45th president of the United States? And are there connections with the Netherlands? ZEMBLA meets with one of Trump’s controversial cronies and speaks with a former CIA agent, fraud investigators, attorneys, and an American senator among others.

After their mother's femicide, three siblings are separated and forced to live in different places. Years later they gather to raise their voices and fight to be made visible in a country where orphans for femicide are ignored by the state and invisible to society. It's up to them to tell their story.

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 Rainbow Warrior was a Greenpeace ship that was bombed by operatives of the French government, in New Zealand in 1985, while heading to a protest against nuclear testing, tragically taking the life of photographer Fernando Pereira. Edward McGurn’s enlightening and exciting documentary uncovers a tangled tale of nuclear weapons, geopolitical coverups, and attempts to take action against impending environmental collapse. Was Pereira’s death an accident or part of a larger political plot?