(Jeff Daniels, US 2020, 90 min., DCP)
On November 20, 1983, ABC-TV broadcast The Day After, a chilling fictional account of the aftermath of a nuclear war on a small Kansas town. More than 100 million viewers tuned in, making it the highest-rated made-for-TV film in history. This came after weeks of buildup and, behind-the-scenes, intense controversy extending all the way to a White House in the midst of a nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union. With impressive access to the principals involved with the project and a trove of archival footage, director Jeff Daniels revisits the improbable story of this anti-nuclear major television event and the impact it left on the Reagan era and beyond. This film is presented in remembrance of the devastation caused by the nuclear explosion over Hiroshima eighty years later.