Things you should know about your own government but were afraid to ask: In 1947, the UN gave the Marshall Islands to the United States to be held in protective trusteeship. But it is a strange foster parent that sees its adoptive children as guinea pigs in nuclear experiments. When the H-bomb was tested in 1954, a white powder fell on the Rongilap and Utirik Atolls that turned the peaceful lives of the islanders into an endless nightmare of radiation effects. In Dennis O'Rourke's exceptional documentary, we see, through interviews and Atomic Energy Commission film footage, that their contamination was no accident of wind or weather, but the result of an official attitude that held the “savages” to be necessary lab animals in the cause of civilization. Sensitively shot and assembled, the film subtly aligns itself with the still-disbelieving islanders and their lost paradise: the story laps onto the screen in gentle waves until, quite suddenly and too late, we realize its powerful undertow.