Director Robert Stone’s controversial doc “Pandora’s Promise,” which challenges environmentalists’ assumptions on the dangers of nuclear power, will be released in theaters on June 12 by distributor Abramorama, followed by a November broadcast on CNN, it was just announced. With the film, Stone, the acclaimed doc-maker who has examined issues of environmentalism (“Earth Days”) and nukes (“Radio Bikini”) before, suggests that nuclear power may be an important tool in the fight against climate change.
In the film, which premiered at this year’s Sundance, Stone takes his camera inside the exclusion zone around Fukushima, and even ventures inside the notorious Chernobyl nuclear power plant, and tells the intensely personal stories of environmentalists and energy experts who have undergone profound conversions from being passionately against, to strongly favoring nuclear energy.
“’Pandora’s Promise’ should inspire broad discussion on the fundamental issues of economic and social disparities and environmental risks,” said CNN’s Amy Entelis. “This is precisely the type of challenging debate we had hoped for when we conceived the mission for CNN Films.”
“I made this film in order to illuminate what I see as the ‘elephant in the room’ when it comes to the ongoing debate about how to tackle climate change,” Stone said. “We have a moral imperative to lift billions of people out of poverty, while at the same time dramatically reducing CO2 emissions. How to do that is the central issue of our time and that led me to take a second look at nuclear energy.”
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