Countdown to Zero

Valerie Plame and Jordan’s Queen Noor are on hand in Cannes helping promote Countdown to Zero. Hoping to spearhead a movement to reduce nuclear weapons to absolute zero, the producers of An Inconvenient Truth are mounting an effort to raise global awareness of the issue as they did with climate change in their Oscar-winning film 4 years ago.

(AFP) A terrifying study of the nuclear threat was launched at the Cannes film festival on Sunday, in a heavyweight campaign documentary showing how terrorists can get hold of atomic weapons.

The Cold War may be long over but “Countdown to Zero” — from the producers behind Nobel Prize winner Al Gore’s climate change polemic “An Inconvenient Truth” — warns that nuclear bombs are easier to come by than ever.

Through interviews with former world leaders, spies, smugglers and scientists, British film-maker Lucy Walker’s work shows how unsecured lumps of uranium in Russia could end up being used by terrorists to destroy cities…

“This is the most urgent threat we face as human beings,” Walker told a news conference after the screening. It “did not go away with the Cold War as we would love to think.”

…The makers of “Countdown to Zero” told reporters after Sunday’s screening of the film that it could muster support for disarmament, just as “An Inconvenient Truth” gave momentum to the fight against climate change.

“We’ve seen that people will get involved in an issue once they’ve seen a film that moves them,” said Jeff Skoll, one of the producers, launching the film along with members of the anti-nuke campaign group Global Zero.