On the 29th of August 1949, the USSR set off their first atomic bomb, just four years after the Americans. The speed with which they achieved this surprised the world. What nobody knew was that it was the result of espionage. At the centre of the operation was a very unusual female spy, Elizabeth Zaroubin, in a story worthy of the best spy novels ever written.
Direction
Gérard Puechmorel weaves archival footage like a thriller
Production
Rare access to Zaroubin family interviews and KGB archives
Director
Gérard Puechmorel
Hervé Lacroix
Narrator (voice)
Albert Einstein
Self (archive footage)
Joseph Stalin
Self (archive footage)
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Self (archive footage)
Adolf Hitler
Self (archive footage)
Alexandre Adler
Self - Historian and Journalist
Leslie Groves
Self - Director of the Manhattan Project (archive footage)
J. Robert Oppenheimer
Self (archive footage)
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Elizabeth Zaroubin's son Pyotr, interviewed here, only learned his mother's true role after the Soviet Union collapsed and KGB files opened.
The 2015 release coincided with renewed Russia-West tensions, making this 70-year-old espionage feel uncomfortably present.
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