| Director | Igor Talankin, Seijun Suzuki |
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The film depicts the nuclear arms race that developed among the major powers during World War II, ultimately setting the stage for the Cold War. The story begins with the 1945 Meeting at the Elbe between American and Soviet forces and the subsequent Potsdam Conference, where Harry S. Truman reveals that the U.S. now possesses a powerful new weapon and will not concede in the postwar division of Europe.
The first part of the film focuses on the war years, covering the Manhattan Project and the American effort to outpace the Germans in developing atomic weapons, while Joseph Stalin decides the Soviet Union must initiate its own atomic program. Allied forces interrogate German scientists in Operation Epsilon to assess Nazi progress on nuclear technology, with physicist Otto Hahn burdened by guilt over the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, feeling responsible as a key figure in nuclear research.
The film then revisits the early 1940s, when Franklin D. Roosevelt authorizes the Manhattan Project following Albert Einstein’s warning. Meanwhile, Adolf Hitler underestimates atomic weapons’ significance, halting Nazi nuclear efforts. In 1942, Stalin assembles Soviet scientists at his Kuntsevo Dacha, inspired by a letter from Junior Lieutenant Georgy Flyorov suggesting that the Allies are advancing nuclear research. Igor Kurchatov is selected to lead the Soviet effort, initiating the USSR’s atomic project amid wartime deprivation.
In the second part, the film shifts to the Soviet post-war nuclear program, as scientists progress from experiments to testing their first atomic bomb at the Semipalatinsk Test Site. The film also portrays the ethical struggles faced by scientists like J. Robert Oppenheimer, who is torn over his role in developing the bomb, and Kurchatov, who later advocates for peaceful nuclear initiatives and the future potential of controlled nuclear fusion. Throughout, the film addresses the profound personal dilemmas confronting the scientists who helped shape the nuclear age.