Through interviews with Manhattan Project scientists and newly declassified archival footage, this documentary examines the life of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer and his leadership of the Manhattan Project. The film traces the development and testing of the first atomic bomb and follows Oppenheimer’s later opposition to nuclear proliferation during the early years of the Cold War.

A rare view from within, as several of the Manhattan Project scientists, including Hans Berthe, Robert Serber, Edward Teller, Robert Wilson, and more, speak of their experiences on the path to a terrible shared destiny. As their lives and work at Los Alamos are revealed, they relate stories of contradictions and jealousies, and how each came to terms with the atomic era's most immediate consequence: the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.