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Sandstorm – The Sahara of Nuclear Tests (2008)
Directed by Larbi Benchiha
Documentary, War, History · 57m
In the late 1950s, the war in northern Algeria was at its peak. Yet, more than a thousand kilometers from the battlefield, a massive project was emerging from the Saharan sands: the atomic bomb. Officers and scientists from the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) were establishing France’s first atomic testing center. On February 13, 1960, at 7:04 a.m., France’s first atomic bomb—codenamed "Gerboise Bleue" (Blue Jerboa) and with a yield of sixty kilotons—was detonated. The town of Reggane lay just forty kilometers from ground zero. Between 1960 and 1966, the French military conducted seventeen tests: four atmospheric explosions near the town of Reggane and thirteen underground tests in the Hoggar region. Half a century later, no epidemiological study has ever been carried out to determine the health and environmental impacts of these tests.
Crew
- Director
- Larbi Benchiha
- Writer
- Larbi Benchiha
- Editor
- Jean-Luc Boivent
Details
- Original title
- Vent de Sable - Le Sahara des essais nucléaires
- Release date
- 2008-01-01
- Runtime
- 57m
- Genres
- Documentary, War, History
- Original language
- FR
- Spoken languages
- French, Arabic
- Countries
- France
- Production
- 24images, France•3 Corse via Stella, Région Bretagne, CNC