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Leo Hickman explains what makes a good environmental film

Earlier this week I spent a long and, in every sense of the word, sober lunch in a trattoria in Turin with fellow jury members at the world's longest running environmental film festival, Cinemambiente, now in its 11th year. Each of us had dutifully watched the 10 shortlisted films, but how do you even begin to choose between films about, say, the societal and environmental influence of the new market economy in Mongolia, the imperialistic excesses of western gold miners in Guinea or the men who break up ships by hand on the oil-stained beaches of Bangladesh for a dollar a day?After three hours of hearty, if sometimes circular, debate we finally settled on a winner. The Nuclear Comeback is a documentary by New Zealand filmmaker Justin Pemberton, weighing up the pros and cons of nuclear energy in a world that urgently needs to decarbonise its economy. On paper, this sounds quite a worthy film - dull, even - but Pemberton achieves a rare feat. God only knows how he persuaded them, but the authorities at Chernobyl allowed him to film inside the now abandoned, highly radioactive control room and inner core. It is thought to be the first time a western film crew has ever been allowed so far inside. In one angst-ridden scene, Pemberton turns to his guide and asks him whether it's still safe to proceed when the radiation detector pinned to his jacket begins to bleep furiously. He is casually told to walk on.Pemberton also manages to get nuclear officials in Britain to admit on film that no one really knows what to do with the spent nuclear fuel that will remain radioactive "for at least 100,000 years". Yet equal time is given to those who argue that we don't really have much choice now other than to go nuclear. Like the best documentaries, it is engaging, nuanced and avoids preaching its cause."Balance is everything," says my fellow juror Ray McCormack, the Irish director of award-winning documentary A Crude Awakening: the Oil Crash. "It was far more effective getting someo...