One year before the Fukushima reactor exploded, the International Uranium Film Festival was founded in 2010 in Santa Teresa, the famous artist quarter in the heart of Rio de Janeiro. The first Uranium Film Festival then was held in May 2011. Main venue is the Cinematheque of Rio de Janeiro's Modern Art Museum (MAM Rio). The festival is dedicated to all films about nuclear power and the risks of radioactivity, from uranium mining to nuclear waste, from atomic bombs to nuclear power plants, from Hiroshima to Fukushima. It throws light on all nuclear issues.
With a selection of the best films the festival travels also to other cities and countries. Until today more than 70 Uranium Film Festivals took place in more than 40 cities and seven countries like Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Jordan, Portugal and USA. Since its first edition in Hollywood in 2016, the International Uranium Film Festival is also known as The Atomic Age Cinema Fest.
In addition to Rio de Janeiro an Uranium Film Festival is planned in January 2023 in Portland, USA.
The festival's award is a piece of art produced by Brazilian waste-material-artist Getúlio Damado who lives and works in the famous artist quarter Santa Teresa in Rio de Janeiro where the first International Uranium Film Festival was held in May 2011. For more than a decade Getúlio collects garbage and transforms it into "gold". Meanwhile his waste-art is part of exhibitions not only in Rio de Janeiro but also in São Paulo and other parts of the world. Getúlio creates the award from waste material that he finds in the streets of Santa Teresa. He uses also old watches to remember the first atomic bomb dropped over Hiroshima. Watches in Hiroshima stopped exactly at 8:15 in the morning when the A-bomb exploded on August 6th, 1945.