Nearly 70,000 nuclear weapons: that was the arsenal Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev were staring at when they sat down in Reykjavik in 1986. A new film, The Brink of War, returns to that room, and the United Nations scheduled a global launch for it on Saturday, August 29, 2026, the UN International Day Against Nuclear Tests.
The UN Movie Society, part of the United Nations Staff Recreation Council, announced the event itself. It was set for 9:00 am New York time, streamed live and available on demand through the UN’s YouTube channel and UN WebTV. The centerpiece was a conversation with Michael Russell Gunn, the film’s director.
What the film is about
According to the UN’s description, the film follows the 1986 Reykjavik Summit, where Reagan and the Soviet leader met behind closed doors at Höfði House. It strips away political theater and shows two opponents locked in talk about whether they could do away with their nuclear arsenals altogether. The summit collapsed over the Strategic Defense Initiative. Even so, the UN says, the trust built in that room helped pave the way for the 1987 INF Treaty a year later.
The UN presents the film as proof that honest, direct communication can head off catastrophe, which is the point of the observance, a day set up by the UN General Assembly to draw attention to the dangers of nuclear testing.
Shot in the real house
The Iceland Film Commission says Gunn filmed in 2024 at Höfði itself, a 1909 timber house in Reykjavik that now serves as a diplomatic reception space. The Icelandic government gave the production special access, and 18 of its 20 main-unit shooting days were spent there. The cast sat in the chairs Reagan and Gorbachev had used, in front of the original paintings from the walls in 1986, borrowed from local museums.
Jeff Daniels plays Reagan and Jared Harris plays Gorbachev. J.K. Simmons is Secretary of State George Shultz, Hope Davis plays Nancy Reagan, and Branka Katic plays Raisa Gorbacheva.
The program
Brenda Vongova, the Movie Society’s artistic director, founded it at UN headquarters to promote the organization’s values through film. The program included the interview with Gunn and a written message from the Secretary-General for the day. Two musicians from the UN Chamber Music Society opened and closed the event: Jeremy Kienbaum on viola and Vongova on piano, playing an arrangement of Brahms’s Intermezzo in A Major from the Six Pieces for Piano, Op. 118.
Sources
- UN Movie Society | Global Event on the UN International Day Against Nuclear Tests – featuring THE BRINK OF WAR | United Nations
- The Brink of War | Iceland Film Commission
