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Lawrence Bender premieres ‘Countdown to Zero’ nuclear doc at Cannes

[additional-authors]
May 11, 2010

For Israel and much of the Jewish community, the next inconvenient truth is the quickening reality of a nuclear Iran.

For Lawrence Bender, the producer who helmed the eye-opening global warming documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” nuclear armament is a pending disaster. Bender and director Lucy Walker will screen their documentary, “Countdown to Zero” at the Cannes Film Festival this week in hopes that the film will catalyze political action. The film explores the current global impulse to go nuclear, the possibility for accident and miscalculation, and features commentary from a bevy of prominent political figures, including Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev, Tony Blair, and Pervez Musharraf. Even Valerie Plame Wilson, the outed CIA operative, makes a cameo to comment on the rickety climate surrounding—what the film is calling, “the second nuclear age.”

According to the blog The Daily Beast, which ranked the film as one of the most anticipated screenings at Cannes, Bender said he hopes the film will not only raise mainstream awareness but “help create the political will necessary to ensure that the Senate ratifies the New START Treaty without delay or partisan bickering.”

Well, that would be one thing the U.S. and Israel could agree upon.

Check out the haunting trailer:

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