The Idealist

On 21 January 1968 an American B-52 carrying four hydrogen bombs crashed near the Thule base in Greenland. Danish workers were put on the clean-up. Years later some of those workers developed cancer, some of their children were born disabled, and nobody was willing to connect the illnesses to the crash. The radio journalist Poul Brink opens the file. The research Brink pursued between 1988 and 1995 uncovered something much larger than the workers' health: Denmark had declared itself a country without nuclear weapons, but the situation in Greenland was another matter. Christina Rosendahl's film is based on real events and describes a journalist's stubbornness stretched over years. Peter Plaugborg plays Brink, with Søren Malling in the cast. The account is not built on heroism; the price Brink made his own life pay is in the film too.