Tag: HBO

The HBO original documentary Fukushima: A Nuclear Nightmare, directed by James Jones (HBO’s Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes), and co-directed by Megumi Inman (Atomic People), debuts March 10 on HBO and will be available to stream on HBO Max.

In March 2011, a 9.0-magnitude earthquake — the strongest ever recorded in Japan — unleashed a tsunami that devastated the country’s northeast coast. Entire towns were erased and 20,000 lives were lost, but an even greater threat loomed at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, where the giant wave disabled the cooling systems of three reactors. As radiation levels soared and hydrogen explosions tore through the facility, Japan’s leaders faced the unimaginable prospect of evacuating Tokyo — the world’s largest city with 35 million people.

Fukushima: A Nuclear Nightmare reconstructs the nine harrowing days following the disaster in forensic, real-time detail, from the control-room engineers fighting to prevent a total meltdown, to the political leaders confronting the unthinkable, to ordinary citizens caught in the fallout. At the heart of the story are the power plant workers who were tasked with averting a major catastrophe. It was potentially a suicide mission, commanded by Japan’s prime minister Naoto Kan. Navigating days of isolation and terror, these plant workers — who would later be known as the courageous Fukushima 50 — recount the mounting pressures they faced as they entered the darkened reactors to try to avert the worst outcome, knowing the work might kill them. For years, these men stayed silent, burdened by guilt and stigma rather than celebrated as heroes. Now the control-room supervisor on duty when the disaster began, Ikuo Izawa, and others who were present in those nine fateful days, recount their detailed experiences publicly for the first time.

The documentary includes first-hand insight from Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant engineers, government advisors, American consultants and journalists, TEPCO officials and emergency workers.

Subscribe HERE to the FREE Media Play News Daily Newsletter!

The documentary 33 Photos From the Ghetto Jan. 27 debuts on HBO Max and HBO.

It tells the story of the only known photographs from inside the Warsaw Ghetto during the April 1943 uprising and its brutal repression that were not taken by German forces. The images, taken secretly by 23-year-old Polish firefighter Zbigniew Leszek Grzywaczewski, who witnessed the devastating response to the uprising as a member of the Warsaw Fire Service, present a rare civilian account of one of World War II’s darkest moments.

The film traces two families, one of which is Jewish, who preserved the images for decades but hadn’t brought them to light until, 80 years after their creation, the son of the photographer finds the forgotten negatives and launches an investigation. With a team of researchers, archivists and animators who use near-forensic precision to reconstruct locations and contexts, they trace the circumstances of those tragic days and the lives captured in each frame.

Subscribe HERE to the FREE Media Play News Daily Newsletter!