Atomic People explores the human fallout from the first and last atomic bombs

In the months before, Robert Oppenheimer, whose story was chronicled in last year’s Oscar-winning Hollywood movie) and other US scientists had been testing atomic bombs at a site located 340km south of Los Alamos, New Mexico.

And with the Second World War continuing in the Pacific, plans advanced for the deployment of nuclear bombs against Japan.

Eventually, a date was set for the dropping of atomic bombs on two Japanese cities – Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki three days later.

The first bomb known as ‘Little Boy’ that decimated Hiroshima was 2,000 times more powerful than any bomb before it, and it instantly killed approximately 80,000 of the city’s 350,000 residents.

Upon detonation, it produced a fireball that raised temperatures to 7,000 degrees Celsius and blast generated shockwaves exceeding the speed of sound.

Then, after the explosion, a heavy downpour of black rain, carrying radioactive fallout, caused widespread contamination.

Those who approached the blast’s epicentre in search of the missing were exposed to the radiation, and by the end of the year, the death toll rose to 140,000, as initial survivors succumbed to illnesses connected to the exposure.

Three days later, in the early hours of August 9, a second US aircraft took off from Tinian Island in the Pacific Ocean, transporting a nuclear device codenamed ‘Fat Man’.

This was a more advanced plutonium-based bomb that had undergone trials during the ‘Trinity test’. While the city of Kokura was originally intended as its primary target, the crew shifted to Nagasaki due to a dense layer of clouds.

The surrender of the Empire of Japan was announced by Emperor Hirohito six days after unprecedented atomic blasts and formally signed on September 2, 1945, thus ending the war

Now, nearly 80 years after those events, and amid recent Russian threats of a nuclear attack, Bafta-winning Benedict Sanderson and his co-director Megumi Inman’s unique film explores the human fallout from the first, and so far last, atomic bombs used in an act of war.

It gathers the testimony of some of the last ‘Hibakusha’ – survivors of the two atomic bombs – before their voices are lost forever.

With an average age of 85, most Hibakusha were children when the bombs were dropped.

Combining their personal accounts with archive footage, Atomic People hears from this shrinking group – the only people left on earth to have survived a nuclear bomb – while exploring how their experiences continue to affect them to this day.

Although the bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were presented as a triumphant moment for the Allied forces, the devastation wreaked on the two Japanese cities and their people has never received quite as much coverage as the bombings.

With the Doomsday Clock now closer to midnight than it has ever been, this poignant and powerful film is a reminder of the destructive power of the world’s arsenal and what the looming threat of nuclear war could entail.