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RELEASES Denmark

Live tweet of Denmark’s worst nuclear accident ahead of new film

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- Danish production outfit Toolbox Film revived a 47-year-old plane crash before the launch of Christina Rosendahl’s thriller The Idealist

Live tweet of Denmark’s worst nuclear accident ahead of new film
At 4:39 pm, 21 January 1968, 19 km from the Thule Air Base in Greenland, US Air Force B-52G-HOBO 28 was ablaze

Denmark’s worst nuclear accident of all time – the 21 January 1968 crash during the Cold War of a US Air Force B-52G bomber carrying four 1.1-megaton atomic bombs, near the Thule Air Base in Greenland – was yesterday revived via a live tweet by Danish production outfit Toolbox Film, to introduce Danish director Christina Rosendahl’s upcoming thriller, The Idealist [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
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It is 4:39 pm: the US bomber is on fire on the sea ice, and the fire has detonated the high explosives in the four B28 bombs, causing a leak of radioactive plutonium contamination. There is hectic diplomatic activity between the US and Denmark. Still it took almost 20 years before Danish TV reporter Poul Brink asked the question, “What was this warplane doing over Danish territory?”

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Brink won the Danish journalists’ Cavling Award for uncovering how the population was deluded by the government, which allowed the Americans to store nuclear weapons at the Thule Base, against its official policy. He researched the facts, and those surrounding the crash, for almost ten years for his 1997 book The Thule Case – The Universe of Lies. Brink died in 2002, aged 49. 

“It is important that we remember this event because it raises important questions about a democratic dilemma: must the truth always be told? Can a country or a society endure revealing all its secrets to the people? And what happens if they are kept secret?” explained Rosendahl of her second feature (after Triple Dare [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
in 2006; she also directed the Lulu & Leon TV series in 2009). 

Based on Brink’s book, and scripted by Lars K Andersen, Simon Pasternak, Birgitte Stærmose and Rosendahl – who participated in yesterday’s event – The Idealist stars Peter Plaugborg, Søren Malling, Thomas Bo Larsen and Arly Jover.

Produced by Jonas Frederiksen, Signe Leick Jensen and Ane Mandrup for Toolbox, Rosendahl Film and Cinevita Film, it will be released domestically on 9 April through SF Film. Denmark’s LevelK handles international sales.

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