YELLOW CAKE - THE DIRT BEHIND URANIUM

by Joachim Tschirner (UM WELT FILM)

    Synopsis

    The film accompanies the biggest clean-up operation in the history of uranium mining and takes the viewers to the big mines in Namibia, Australia and Canada. Uranium mining, the first link in the chain of nuclear development, has managed again and again to keep itself out of the public eye. A web of propaganda, disinformation and lies covers its 65-year history. The third largest uranium mine in the world was located in the East German provinces of Saxony and Thuringia. Operating until the Reuni fication, it had the code name WISMUT and supplied the Soviet Union exclusively with the much soughtafter strategic resource Yellow Cake. Until 1990 WISMUT supplied the Soviet Union with 220,000 tons of uranium. In absolute terms, this quantity was enough for the production of 32,000 Hiroshima bombs. For the last 20 years, WISMUT has been making a huge material and financial effort to come to terms with its past, which is an alarming present and future on other continents. For five years, the filmmakers accompanied the world’s largest sanitation project in the history of uranium mining. During that time the world market for uranium changed in a dramatic way. Uranium has advanced to become one of the most sought after resources in the world. While shooting this film, the price for uranium on the world market increased twenty times … WORLD SALES: HS Media Consult Wasenstr. 29 72135 Dettenhausen, Germany tel.: +49 (0) 7157-620008 info@hsmedia-consult.de http://www.hsmedia-consult.de http://www.umweltfilm.de

    Festivals

    DOK Leipzig
    Atlantis-Filmfest Wiesbaden
    Best Documentary at Arktis International Film Festival
    The Kodiak-Award

    Cast and Crew

    Director

    Joachim Tschirner (UM WELT FILM)

    Screenplay

    Joachim Tschirner (UM WELT FILM)

    Editor

    Joachim Tschirner (UM WELT FILM), Burghard Drachsel

    DoP

    Robert Laatz, Jana Marsik, Friedo Feindt, Lars Barthel, Christian Maletzke