IUFF in times of Corona by Jutta Wunderlich

The corona epidemic has hit many film festivals hard, including us. But we won’t let ourselves get down. The festival must go on. That is why we want to hold the Uranium Film Festival 2020 in Berlin from October 15th to 18th.

The International Uranium Film Festival (IUFF) was founded a few months before the Fukushima nuclear accident happened. No other film festival in Germany or worldwide shows the full range of nuclear threats from uranium mining to nuclear waste and brings so many films about nuclear and radioactive dangers to the cinema. The Uranium Film Festival is the only festival in the world that is dedicated to the topic of radioactivity and the entire atomic fuel chain and fills an important gap in the film festival landscape.

Just one year after the first International Uranium Film Festival 2011 of Rio de Janeiro, the festival was also also organized in Berlin and has become today an indisputable part of Berlin’s cultural landscape and festival scene. Since 2012 the Uranium Film Festival has brought numerous German premieres and dozens of international filmmakers to Berlin.

This time in October the festival program includes 14 films from 10 countries: https://uraniumfilmfestival.org/de/programm-berlin-2020

Co-organizer of IUFF Berlin 2020 is the ICBUW, other cooperation partners are IALANA, IPPNW, Sayonara Nukes Berlin and the Peace Bell Society Berlin.

The International Uranium Film Festival is financially supported by the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety and the Umweltbundesamt.

We want to bring as many filmmakers as possible to Berlin so that they can present their films in person and exchange ideas with the audience.

The exchange between the filmmakers and the audience and also between the filmmakers themselves is particularly important to us. Through Q & A with the public and interviews the presence of Filmmakers can significantly increase the impact of the films on the audience and improves the media’s attention for the films, filmmakers and the festival.

In a few cases, the presence of the filmmakers in Berlin is supported by the production companies, state representatives or cultural institutes. Because of the importance of the festival, others even travel at their own expense if the festival at least covers the hotel costs.

Advertising too is important to bring audience to the festival and distribute the festival’s message.  We would like to reach as many spectators as possible. Since the support of several sponsors is no longer available due to the economic difficulties caused by COVID-19. The festival needs more additional donations. Every cent goes directly to the Uranium Film Film Festival Berlin.

Nuclear power concerns everyone!

With our films, events and exhibitions, we want to attract the broadest possible public. Nuclear power concerns us all and will continue to do so for many years to come. Even if all nuclear power plants and all uranium mines should one day may have been shut down, for thousands of years our societies will still be responsible for the radioactive remains, nuclear waste dumps and the highly radioactive nuclear waste.

The Uranium Film Festival Berlin is therefore aimed at everyone and at all ages. From young people to retirees. From students to professors, Berliners and non-Berliners. Radioactive risks, nuclear waste and nuclear disasters such as Three Mile Island, Chernobyl or Fukushima must neither be forgotten nor played down.

Even if the nuclear phase-out has already been decided in Germany, other countries such as Brazil, China, India, Russia and several countries in Africa continue to or intend to invest in nuclear energy. In addition, even Germany is still a long way from solving the problem of nuclear waste. Furthermore, NATO and other Armies still use uranium ammunition leaving behind toxic and redioactive contaminated battlefields and military training areas and thousands of human victims. With the festival we can reach a wide audience, and in contrast to the classic transfer of knowledge via print media, work-shops or speaches, movies make the context visually, emotionally and intellectually tangible. Also because of that, International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons (ICBUW) is partnering the Uranium Film Festival since 2012.

Around 20 countries have effective tank and bunker busting ammunition with depleted uranium, also known as DU ammunition. Depleted uranium (DU) is waste of the nuclear industry produced during the enrichment process to get nuclear fuel and weapons-grade uranium. DU-ammunition was and is used in war zones. When the projectiles hit armored surfaces, the ammunition bursts into explosive splinters at high temperatures, creating radioactive dust. This leads to epidemic malformations in newborns and to high rates of cancer diseases such as leukemia. The festival in Berlin will present a new important film on this subject, „Balentes – The Brave Ones“ by Lisa Camillo:

Acessibility
The cinema in the KulturBrauerei is easily accessible by public transport. The respective underground and suburban railway stations are equipped with lifts. All event rooms are barrier-free for people with physical disabilities. Wheelchair and walker parking spaces are available. A reduction on the admission price is granted not only for schoolchildren and students but also for the disabled.

Sustainability
The IUFF program is open to the public and for everyone. In addition to the opportunity to attend the cinema screenings, the detailed presentation in the program booklet and the multilingual IUFF website www.uraniumfilmfestival.org provide permanent information on the films and the underlying topics.

The festival itself will be documented by Falko Seidel and the photographer Marek Karakasevic and video interviews will be produced for sustainable evaluation. The website content, trailers and video clips are also distributed via social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Xing) and via our German and international YouTube channel. A film database, the “Yellow Archive” for atomic films, was set up and now includes well over 250 films.

We work consistently with eco-certified, fair trade, regional and recycled resources and use them conscientiously and sparingly. We use renewable energy and recommend our guests from other continents to use climate-neutral flights for their journey.

The Uranium Film Festival was founded in 2010 by German journalist, filmmaker and book author Norbert G. Suchanek and Brazilian social scientist, teacher and filmmaker Márcia Gomes de Oliveira.

Márcia Gomes de Oliveira was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1970 and works there as a sociologist, filmmaker and professor at the Adolpho Bloch / FAETEC Technical School. Norbert G. Suchanek was born in Würzburg in 1963. He lives and works in Rio de Janeiro as a journalist, author, filmmaker and correspondent .

My name is Jutta Wunderlich. I have been working as festival coordinator for the IUFF Berlin since 2014 and as festival producer I have been responsible for all aspects of the preparation and implementation of the festival week in Berlin since 2016.

we keep you informed about nuclear risks. It is important for the future of mankind and our planet earth that the consequences of atomic bombs and nuclear accidents, the dangers of uranium mining itself, the problem of nuclear waste and the consequences of the use of uranium ammunition are and remain in everyone’s consciousness.