Investigating the enigmatic personality and politics of the “father of the atomic bomb,” J. Robert Oppenheimer, Jon Else's powerful documentary takes us into the military boardrooms of Washington, D.C., the battlegrounds of World War II, the aftermath of Hiroshima, and most of all the eerie wilderness of Northern New Mexico, where the Manhattan Project exploded into reality. Else and co-writers David and Janet Peoples weave together declassified government footage with the recollections of surviving participants in the Oppenheimer story. The enormity of the project comes full flush forward, as a colossal lab for atomic research with some 6000 scientists is conjured out of the scrub of a high desert enclave called Los Alamos. Color footage of Oppenheimer and his team assembling the first bomb at the Trinity site in July 1945 captures that moment before the world changed forever. Accompanying Else's exacting work will be clips from his latest work in progress Wonders Are Many, a portrait of Peter Sellars and John Adams at work on their new opera, Doctor Atomic.