The groundbreaking documentary Atomic Reaction, directed by the acclaimed Michèle Hozer, has been awarded Best Local Feature at the 2025 Belleville Downtown DocFest International Documentary Film Festival. This powerful film, which delves into Canada’s role in the Manhattan Project and its lasting nuclear legacy, continues to captivate audiences with its gripping storytelling and unflinching historical revelations.
The film has already earned widespread acclaim, including a stellar A rating review from Original Cin, where critic Liz Braun describes it as “a quietly gripping documentary… This is a strange and sorry chapter in our history.” Braun further emphasizes the film’s lasting impact: “As the film makes clear, ongoing radioactive contamination from radium and uranium mining/refining makes it an unfinished chapter — nothing about this story can be safely relegated to the past.”
With meticulous research and striking archival footage, Atomic Reaction brings to light Canada’s pivotal role in the development of the atomic bomb—an often-overlooked narrative in global history. The film details the discovery of uranium in Canada by Gilbert LaBine, the environmental and human consequences of uranium mining, and the connection between Canadian industry and the devastating bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It also underscores the ongoing struggle of Indigenous communities who have faced the long-term health impacts of radiation exposure.
“We are thrilled and honored to receive this recognition at Belleville Downtown DocFest,” said Bernie Finkelstein, one of the film’s producers. “Atomic Reaction is an essential story about Canada’s involvement in nuclear history, and we hope this award helps bring even more attention to these important conversations.”
The film is co-produced by David Hatch, a veteran documentarian known for his investigative storytelling, alongside Hozer, whose award-winning career has shaped some of Canada’s most compelling documentary narratives. Their collaboration has resulted in a film that is both visually stunning and deeply informative, shining a light on the haunting legacy of nuclear development in Canada.
“Winning Best Local Feature is a testament to the importance of this story and the incredible response from audiences,” added Hozer. “Canada’s nuclear history isn’t just about the past—it continues to affect lives today. We hope Atomic Reaction encourages further dialogue.”
The movie lays out these momentous and sometimes horrific events with a full flair for drama and a journalistic commitment to the truth. Audiences will have a chance to see for themselves when Atomic Reaction is currently airing on the CBC Documentary Channel and on CBC GEM starting January 10, 2025.
Those three creative principals come to Atomic Reaction bearing a wealth of entertainment-media credentials. Finkelstein is a music-industry legend whose self-founded indie label True North Records has logged 500 releases (40 of them gold and platinum) and netted 40 JUNO Awards, its roster boasting A-list names like Bruce Cockburn, Randy Bachman, Rough Trade, Murray McLauchlan, Lenny Breau and Lighthouse. As an artist manager, he’s handled the likes of Cockburn, Dan Hill, The Paupers, Barney Bentall, and Blackie & The Rodeo Kings. Related ventures have included The True North Publishing Group, which guarded the rights to a library of works by pop songwriters and composers for films and TV. Finkelstein has served as chairman of the Ontario Film Development Corporation and sat on the board of that organization and numerous others, including the Canadian Independent Record Production Association (CIRPA, which he co-founded and is now known as CIMA), the Canadian Association Of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS) and the Toronto Arts Awards. He is a member of the Canadian Music Hall Of Fame and the Order of Canada, and has received both the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee medal and the JUNOs’ Walt Grealis Special Achievement Award, the highest honour given to a non-musician by the Canadian music industry. His work on Atomic Reaction adds to a film résumé that includes the 2012 Cockburn documentary Pacing The Cage, which debuted on Vision TV.
Hatch is the founder of WhistleStop Productions Inc., which since its founding in 1989 has produced 60 original network television series and numerous one-off, multicamera, live event productions for broadcast. With a focus on cutting-edge sports, magazine and documentary programming, the company has generated 23 original series for Netflix, Discovery Velocity, the Smithsonian Channel and others. Its documentary arm has dug deep into subjects ranging from professional auto racing to Canadian warships’ hunt for terrorists in the Persian Gulf to a 70-year-old man’s dream to set the world land-speed record on the Bonneville Salt Flats. In addition to his work with WhistleStop Productions, Hatch’s extensive programming résumé has included over 500 hours of original, broadcast network programming for Bell Media and ESPN Inc. and 180 hours of television for Blue Ant Media. A lifelong music devotee (and a guitarist in his own right), he’s shepherded documentaries on superstars like Rush and Lyle Lovett, and his six-hour blues docuseries, Cities in Blue (created for HIFI HD and Smithsonian), was nominated for a Canadian Screen Award.
As a filmmaker and editor, Hozer has been making a significant contribution to the Canadian cultural landscape since 1987. Her documentary Shake Hands with The Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire won the 2007 Emmy for Best Documentary and the Audience Award at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. Her co-directorial debut with Peter Raymont, Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould, earned a coveted spot on the Academy Award shortlist and a Gemini Award for Best Biography. In 2012, Hozer and her team received the Allan King Award for Excellence in Documentary by The Director’s Guild of Canada (DGC) for their work on West Wind: The Vision of Tom Thomson. Other awards on her mantel include the Canadian Screen Awards’ Donald Brittain Award for her self-directed, -edited and -produced documentary Sugar Coated, and the Picture This Film Festival’s Dodie Spittal Award for her short The Barber of Augusta. More recently, she’s acted as both writer and editor on The Reckoning: Hollywood’s Worst Kept Secret and as an editor on the Frontline special In the Age of AI.
Atomic Reaction is already proving a more-than-worthy addition to this highly accomplished trio’s collective pedigree: The doc received an Honorable Mention at the 2024 International Uranium Film Festival, an event dedicated to nuclear issues that’s been presented since 2011 in Rio de Janeiro. With the film about to go before several entirely new sets of eyes, its own half-life seems to be nowhere near the horizon.
