Despite being awarded at the Venice Film Festival and winning the 1967 Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, The War Game was, according to an internal report of the BBC, ‘too horrifying for the medium of broadcasting’. Commissioned for screening in 1965, the reaction within the Corporation and the then-government to the finished piece was such that it did not receive its first broadcast until 1985. Its pseudo-documentary style presents a nuclear attack on Sheffield in the manner of a news report, its power lying in its detached and chilling depiction of the rigid structure of British society falling quickly into violent chaos, in part due to the unsuitability of existing civil defence plans and lack of public awareness of the reality of such an attack.

Admission to this screening of The War Game is free, but ticketed. 

Screening as part of the Fallout season. Multi-film passes available from the IFI Box Office: 3 for €30, 5 for €50, and 12 for €100.

Notes by Kevin Coyne.