No More Hiroshima
1984 · 25m · Canada
Directed by Martin Duckworth
Genres: documentary, historical, war
Tones: contemplative, provocative, tender
Two survivors of the atomic bombings travel to New York as Japanese peace representatives for a 1982 United Nations disarmament session to advocate against nuclear weapons.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone expects the doc about atomic survivors to genuflect toward tragedy; Duckworth takes two witnesses into the belly of Cold War geopolitics instead, and lets the absurdity of that setting do half the work—it's sneaky and refuses the easy emotional beat.
A formally disciplined essay film that understands its place in the lineage of activist documentary and structural witness-testimony; the restraint in how Duckworth frames these survivors against the architecture of institutional power is precisely calibrated.
The key move is acoustic—Duckworth lets the survivors' voices carry the weight while the city dissolves around them, a sound-design choice that transforms what could be hectoring testimony into something intimate and isolating.