International Uranium Film Festival has selected its Winners 2024

In advance, the 13th International Uranium Film Festival (IUFF) Rio de Janeiro 2024, to be held May 25th to June 1st at Rio’s Modern Art Museum (MAM Rio) Cinematheque, has announced its Jury award winners. “Normally we announce the winners at the official award ceremony at the last day of the festival at Rio de Janeiro’s prestigious Modern Art Museum Cinematheque,” says executive director Márcia Gomes de Oliveira.  “This year, we are going to an extended tour across USA and Canada before Rio, and we wanted to honor these films during our two months in North America.”

Starting March 7 in Window Rock, Arizona, the festival - also known as Atomic Age Cinema Fest - dedicated to films about nuclear power and uranium mining risks will travel more than 7,000 miles across North America to 13 cities and end May 1st in Las Vegas, Nevada.  “For that reason, we decided to announce the top award winners 2024 in advance,“ explains Márcia Gomes de Oliveira from Rio de Janeiro.

IUFF Jury Awards 2024 go to:

• Nuked by Andrew Nisker, Canada (Best Feature Documentary Award).
• Demon Mineral by Hadley Austin, USA (Best First Feature Female Documentary Award).
• SOS - The San Onofre Syndrome: Nuclear Power's Legacy by James Heddle, Mary Beth Brangan and Morgan Peterson, USA (Best Educational Documentary Award).
• Atomic Gods: Creation Myths of the Bomb by Adam Jonas Horowitz, USA (Best Mockumentary Award and Best Soundtrack Award)
• Honeymoon in Oak Ridge by Joe Tripician, USA, (Best Short Documentary Award). 
• Atomic Bamboozle: The False Promise of a Nuclear Renaissance by Jan Haaken, USA (Special Jury Award for tackling the current issue of new nuclear reactors)
• Building Bombs - 4k Restoration by Mark Mori and Susan J. Robinson (Special Jura Award for restoran of an historic documentary)
• Jadugoda - The Land of Magic by Satish Munda, India, (Best Short Fiction Movie Award).

Director Satish Munda from Ranchi will also receive the "Samuel Lawrence Foundation Award for the Best Young Filmmaker" accompanied by a $1,000 cash prize donated by the Samuel Lawrence Foundation (SLF). It will be presented during the opening of the IUFF Chicago, March 27 at the Haymarket House.

Libbe HaLevy, producer and host of the Nuclear Hotseat podcast/broadcast and Ambassador to the United States for the festival, states, “Films are an important tool in educating the public about the dangers posed by all aspects of the nuclear fuel chain, from uranium mining to refining to reactors to weapons to forever-dangerous radioactive waste.  They communicate a great deal of information in a concentrated way so that the public can understand the risks posed by all things nuclear and hopefully be inspired to take action.” 

As in the previous years, the official awards ceremony and the awarding of the IUFF trophies will take place on the last day of the festival, on June 1, 2024, in the cinema of the Museum of Modern Art (MAM Rio). The Audience Award Winners of the 2024 Festival of Rio will also be announced during the ceremony.

The International Uranium Film Festival's trophy is a piece of art produced by Brazilian waste-material-artist Getúlio Damado, who lives and works in the famous artist quarter Santa Teresa in Rio de Janeiro where the first International Uranium Film Festival was held in May 2011.