Pilcaniyeu

PILCANIYEU

Documentary Series - Argentina/Brazil/Spain

The secret history of the Argentina-Brazil nuclear race.

1978. A private plane lands at a small airport in Bariloche. It’s passengers are a group of CIA agents on a mission to inspect the Argentina’s atomic research lab. The team is led by Harry Schlaudeman, an ambassador sent by Ronald Reagan. After a three-hour drive, they arrive at the Pichileufú ravine where they are greeted by a caretaker drinking mate and surrounded by stray dogs. But instead of a research facility, they find an abandoned shed full of scattered sanitary ware.

At the same time, another US mission inspects the Angra do Reis nuclear reactor in Brazil. Here, the US envoy who examines the facility, reports that the technology he finds is obsolete. He’s unaware that the old uranium centrifuges the Brazilians show him are merely a decoy, while state-of-the-art equipment remains hidden behind a double wall.

These are just two of numerous attempts to monitor Argentina and Brazil’s burgeoning nuclear research, but they always ended the same - with a series of deceptions that kept the real scientific breakthroughs under wraps.

But as the two countries avoided US intrusions, mutual distrust grew. Their spy planes flew over each other’s secret atomic research centres and the military simulated conflict scenarios. Foremost in their planning, is the potential for their rivals to gain nuclear weapons.

All this took a dramatic turn with the arrival of democracy in Argentina, when the country announced to the world that it now had the capability to enrich uranium. Not only could they now produce the fuel needed for nuclear power, but also to build an atomic bomb. Brazil achieved the same goal soon after.

When democracy arrived in Brazil barely a year later, a meeting in Foz do Iguazú between Presidents José Sarney and Raúl Alfonsín transformed the relationship between the two countries forever. 1987. A train rattles through Argentine bound for the secret Pilcaniyeu nuclear plant - the very same facility the United States had never been able to find. On board the train, the two presidents set an agenda for cooperation that continues to this day.

Brazil was granted unrestricted access to the facility, and a few months later the gesture was reciprocated when a contingent of Argentine scientists were granted access to Brazil’s Angra do Reis plant.

Language - Spanish/Brazilian-Portuguese

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DIRECTOR - PABLO MENSI
PRODUCERS - VIRGINIA ROMERO PEREZ, TONY ALLEN,
NAZARENA MATTERA, TIAGO SANTOS
IN CO-PRODUCTION WITH:
MURINGA PRODUCOES AUDIOVISUAIS
& AUSTRAL FILMS