EXCLUSIVELY AT IFI
The preview of Countdown to Zero on June 21st will be followed by a discussion (via satellite) featuring, Queen Noor of Jordan, U.K. Labour politician Margaret Beckett and ex-CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson.

As the years go by, and no-one’s yet pushed the red button, the possibility of nuclear destruction gets increasingly remote, right? Wrong! Lucy Walker’s campaigning film is a highly effective warning that such complacency could be lethal in a world where ruthless terrorists are out there trying to buy enriched plutonium, a faulty computer chip could precipitate the apocalypse, and rogue nations have joined the atomic weapons club. The presence of Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev, Robert McNamara and Tony Blair among the politicians, scientists, activists and intelligence experts contributing their views to the film’s assured construction of opinion and archive footage gives some sense of the significance of the project (from Tarantino’s producer Lawrence Bender, no less!). Powerful without being overly preachy, its persuasive argument that the only safe and sensible way forward is a nuclear-free future is given genuine weight by, among other things, the revelation that the world very nearly ended in 1995! Watch, learn and gasp. (Notes by Trevor Johnston).