Scrap nukes, director Bigelow urges in thriller at Venice

The world needs to be “more informed” and reduce its nuclear stockpile, US director Kathryn Bigelow said on Tuesday ahead of the premiere of her latest film, about an imminent strike on the US.

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The first woman to win the Academy Award for best director, Bigelow showcased her first movie in eight years, White House political thriller “A House of Dynamite,” at the Venice Film Festival on Tuesday to ecstatic early reviews. The Hollywood Reporter called it an “unrelenting chokehold thriller.” Arguing for nuclear disarmament, the director of “The Hurt Locker” and “Zero Dark Thirty” said human survival was at stake.

“Hope against hope maybe we reduce the global stockpile someday but in the meantime we are really living in a house of dynamite,” she told journalists at a press conference ahead of the film’s premiere. “I want them all gone. How is annihilating the world a good defensive measure? I mean, what are you defending?” asked Bigelow. “We need to be much more informed, and that would be my greatest hope, and that we actually initiate a conversation about nuclear weapons and nonproliferation in a perfect world,” she said.