Eighty years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and almost 40 years after the end of the Cold War, the threat of nuclear weapons is back to haunt humanity. SILENT WAR explores this renewed anxiety by tracing the history of nuclear weapons and revealing the hidden toll of the more than 2,000 nuclear bombs world-wide that were called "tests", and their lasting impact on people. These “demonstrations of power” devastated entire communities, leaving behind poisoned landscapes, shattered livelihoods, and generations marked by radiation and loss.
Through a sweeping global narrative, the film gives voice—often for the first time on camera —to forgotten witnesses and victims whose testimonies lend deterrence a human face of pain, remembrance, and resilience. Their stories are set in the wider context by renowned experts, who frame this suffering within the geopolitical rivalries, lies and deceptions of the nuclear age, disturbingly revived by today’s nuclear threats from Russia, China and others.
