“The Atomic Bowl,” PBS Film and Book, August 2025
https://gregmitchphoto.com/atomicbowl/
“The Atomic Bowl,” PBS Film and Book, August 2025
“Explores the legacy and the continuing threat of nuclear war.”
— The Washington Post
or on PBS stations, updated list at bottom of page
Written and directed by Greg Mitchell. / Producer: Lyn Goldfarb Narrator: Peter Coyote. / Contact: epic1934@aol.com
“A great movie–a hidden chapter in atomic history revealed.” — Jayne Loader, co-director of The Atomic Cafe
“Today’s nuclear tensions make Mitchell’s storytelling more timely than ever.” — Will Bunch, The Philadelphia Inquirer
“Fascinating. Poor Nagasaki got lost because it was the second bombing.”— Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize winner for The Making of the Atomic Bomb
“A master storyteller and urgent reminder of the terrors of nuclear war. Necessary viewing.” — Charles P. Pierce, Esquire
“Excellent work — haunting and very moving.” — Rick Perlstein, best-selling author of Nixonland, Reaganland and other books
“The story is riveting, and really fantastic archival film-making.” — Ben Proudfoot, Academy Award winner for best short documentary, 2021 and 2024
“A haunting reminder of the threat of nuclear weapons. Initially suppressed by the US government, worth revisiting today as the Trump administration hollows out nuclear expertise across the government.” — Erik English, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
“One of the most disturbing sports events in US history.” — David Corn, Mother Jones
“Excellent and very important.” — Oliver Stone, film director
“A terrific film, and a powerful statement on the lingering atomic threat. Makes the case for Nagasaki’s importance and relating the children’s deaths to the current situation in Ukraine and Gaza.” –Gary Krist, best-selling author of The Mirage Factory and other books.
“This is superb and elicits very strong emotions, also quite timely.”— Sarah Kernochan, two-time Academy Award-winning documentary director
“A great film.” — Amy Goodman, host, Democracy Now!
First prize, Best Documentary Feature, International Uranium Film Festival, Rio de Janiero, May 2025
“It’s a fascinating story, very well told, and one I knew nothing about. The archival research is fantastic.” –Deborah Shaffer, director of Academy Award-winning Witness to War, The Wobblies, and other films.
“With the horrific nuclear anniversaries approaching, please watch this.” — Joan Walsh, writer for The Nation, film producer, former MSNBC
“Haunting and excellent!” — John Cusack, actor, Fat Man and Little Boy and many other films
“The Atomic Bowl is a magnificent film.” — Robert Jay Lifton, author of Death In Life: Survivors of Hiroshima, a National Book Award winner, and numerous other books
“A gripping documentary that explores our uneasy nuclear legacy.” — Chuck Todd
“A hell of a historian and doc film maker. Pay attention when this comes out.” — Rod Lurie, director of The Outpost, The Contender, Straw Dogs, and other films.
“Greg Mitchell relieves our nearly universal denial of nuclear history with his revelatory film about the horrors of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki in 1945. Let us remember that Hiroshima was not the only child of our cruelty.”— Carole Gallagher, author and photographer American Ground Zero: The Secret Nuclear War.
“A riveting film, and the topic couldn’t be more urgent. The Atomic Bowl is terrific, and it’s remarkable how much you convey, and how powerfully you convey it, in less than an hour’s running time.” — David Sterritt, former chair, National Society of Film Critics.
“The long-forgotten game in a city where most of bombings’ victims were non-combatants was emblematic of the American military and public’s takeaways from the second nuclear bombing.” — Politico
“Powerful, incredible and unique.” — NIck Gillespie, editor-at-large, Reason magazine and host of their podcast.
“Fascinating and macabre, very disturbing and evocative. You remind us what an inexcusable and immoralm, and even unnecessary, act of war it was.” — Stephen Talbot, winner of numerous awards for films such as The Movement and the Madman, and producer of many Emmy-winning films for PBS Frontlilne.
“An excellent, much-needed corrective to the general lack of coverage Nagasaki. ” — Glenn Silber, director of Academy Award nominee The War at Home
“One of the great films of 2025.” — Steve Kopian, Unseen Films
Media requests: Epic1934aol.com
“Great job telling the story and actually its conclusions are terrifying.”— Sharon Grimberg, Emmy-nominated producer/director for PBS “American Experience”
“Talented journalist and filmmaker Greg Mitchell has a new PBS documentary out–and it’s fascinating.” — Thomas Maier, author of When Lions Roar: The Churchills and the Kennedys, Masters of Sex, and other books and Emmy-winning producer
“This is a story that reads like a Twilight Zone episode or an event from an alternative timeline….But no. It actually happened. A chilling reminder that the world is not as we usually take it to be.” — Paul Rosenberg, Salon
“Essential viewing. To call Atomic Bowl ‘powerful’ is to show how weak words can be. Nagasaki is always presented as an afterthought to Hiroshima but if anything it tells much more about the physical, spiritual and moral horrors of our nuclear age.” –Daniel M. Gold, South China Morning Post, and former New York Times film critic
“Engrossing and insightful documentary….raises probing and vexing questions about why we continue to face the threat of nuclear peril today.” — Robert Israel, The Arts Fuse
Producer: Lyn Goldfarb Narrator: Peter Coyote. Editor: Rob Burgos. Associate producers: Bill Geerhart, Barbara Bedway. Composer: John E. Low. Research: Tim Goldsmith Advisor: Markus Nornes
There have been numerous films on The Bomb, even one or two about Nagasaki, but “The Atomic Bowl: Football at Ground Zero — and Nuclear Peril Today” is unique, and with many lessons and warnings for today–as nuclear dangers proliferate and civilian casualties in wars climb even higher.
This football showdown featured college and pro stars, on January 1, 1946, and in (of all places) Nagasaki, near ground zero for the second atomic bomb, which killed over 80,000 just a few weeks earlier. The film, narrated by Peter Coyote, is not only the first full first-hand account of the game, but a provocative and disturbing story of the decision to drop a second atomic bomb just three days after Hiroshima–and the dangerous message to today’s leaders. Nearly all of the victims of the “forgotten bomb” were women and children and other civilians.
This important film, which includes rare footage and dozens of never published photographs, then offers a convincing argument about the relevance of Nagasaki today as mass civilian casualties in wars surge and nuclear dangers by all estimates grow every year.
Its writer and director Greg Mitchell has been one of the world’s leading authorities on the atomic bombings for several decades, and his recent film, “Atomic Cover-up,” won several awards, including the top prize from the Organization of American Historians and was aired via PBS. His two other recent films, “The First Attack Ads” and the award-winning “Memorial Day Massacre,” also earned PBS distribution (as well as Emmy nods), and like “The Atomic Bowl” were produced by Academy Award nominee Lyn Goldfarb.
Trailer here:
GREG MITCHELL, Writer and Director
Greg Mitchell’s three previous films have been aired via PBS since 2021. He is also the author of more than a dozen books, including The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics, winner of the Goldsmith Book Prize and one of five finalists for the Los Angeles Times Book Awards. It was later named by the Wall Street Journal as one of the five greatest books every written about an election race. His film, Atomic Cover-up, won the top film prize from the Organization of American Historians in 2024 and three others awards, and screened at more than twenty festivals around the world. “The First Attack Ads” and “The Memorial Day Massacre” received Emmy nominations. He also co-produced another festival favorite, Following the Ninth, in 2014. Among his other books are the bestselling The Tunnels: Escapes Under the Berlin Wall (2016), The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood–and America–Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (2020), as well as the earlier Tricky Dick and the Pink Lady and Hiroshima in America.
LYN GOLDFARB, Producer
Lyn Goldfarb is an Academy Award-nominated and award-winning independent documentary filmmaker, with 19 films broadcast nationally on PBS and major cable. Her latest documentary short Eddy’s World played at more than 30 film festivals and was featured for several months on The New Yorker’s site. Her feature films include: With Babies and Banners: Story of the Women’s Emergency Brigade; Danger: Kids at Work; People in Motion; The New Los Angeles; Bridging the Divide: Tom Bradley and the Politics of Race; and the series: The Roman Empire in the First Century, Japan: Memoirs of a Secret Empire, and California and the American Dream. Goldfarb was director, producer and writer of We Have a Plan, an episode in the acclaimed 1993 The Great Depression series, produced by Blackside, Inc.
“The story of the Atomic Bowl feels both surreal and familiar because sports and military propaganda are often linked.” — Erik English, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Watch The Atomic Bowl on local PBS stations
It has aired at over 100 stations in August so far and now upcoming below, more coming in Sept/Oct
CA
Los Angeles, SoCal (KOCE) 8/20
San Bernardino , KVCR 9/4
IL
Chicago watch now via WTTW https://video.wttw.com/
IN
Ft. Wayne WFWA 8/26
Indianapolis WFYI 8/28, 8/29
NH/MA (Boston area)
WENH, WEKW 8/9
MI
Detroit , WTVS 8/15, 8/16
Grand Rapids WGVK, WGVU 8/18
NC
Greensboro , WUNL 8/15
Raleigh/Durham, WUNC, WUNP 8/15
Wilmington, WUNJ 8/15
OH
Cleveland KVIZ 8/21
OK
Oklahoma City KETA 8/19
Tulsa KOED 8/19
PA
Philadelphia, WPPT, WLVT several days 8/5-8/10
UT
Salt Lake City, KUEN 8/13
VT
Burlington, WLED 8/9
WA
Spokane KWSU 8/16
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