The most terrifying thing about nuclear weapons isn’t the warheads, but how quiet we as a society have become about them. The Cold War-era fear of total annihilation has morphed into a dangerous cultural amnesia that Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow finds deafening. With her newest film, A House of Dynamite, she is determined to make the world listen again.  

“I think the fact that the conversation has drifted off has a lot to do with the fact that nuclear weapons have sort of been normalized,” Bigelow tells Newsweek’s H. Alan Scott. “And that in and of itself is a pretty terrifying idea. And the fact that we don’t look at it with the kind of global annihilation prospect that we should. I mean, we don’t tend to take it very seriously.” 

Pick up our cover story on Bigelow in the latest issue of Newsweek.  

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