‘A Compassionate Spy’ Trailer: Steve James’ Manhattan Project Doc Tells the Story Behind Oppenheimer’s Colleague

Is there such thing as a sympathetic cause for treason?

Magnolia Pictures documentary “A Compassionate Spy,” directed by two-time Oscar nominee Steve James (“Hoop Dreams,” “Life Itself”), captures the controversial true story of Manhattan Project physicist Ted Hall. Part of the team behind J. Robert Oppenheimer’s atomic bomb, Hall shared nuclear secrets with the Soviet Union. The documentary is told through the perspective of Ted’s wife Joan Hall, who protected his secret across their 50-year marriage.

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The official “Compassionate Spy” synopsis reads: Recruited in 1944 as an 18-year-old Harvard undergraduate to help J. Robert Oppenheimer and his team create a bomb, Ted Hall was the youngest physicist on the Manhattan Project, and didn’t share his colleagues’ elation after the successful detonation of the world’s first atomic bomb. Concerned that a U.S. post-war monopoly on such a powerful weapon could lead to nuclear catastrophe, Hall began passing key information about the bomb’s construction to the Soviet Union. After the war, he met, fell in love with, and married Joan, a fellow student with whom he shared a passion for classical music and socialist causes — and the explosive secret of his espionage. The pair raised a family while living under a cloud of suspicion and years of FBI surveillance and intimidation.

“A Compassionate Spy” premiered at the 2022 Venice Film Festival ahead of its North American launch at Telluride. The film is distributed by Magnolia Pictures and will be released on the heels of Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” which fictionalizes the creation of the bomb itself. “Oppenheimer” will be released in theaters July 21 and used real scientists in Los Alamos as extras.

“We have to be really on our game, we have to be faithful to the history here, and really know what we’re up to,” director Christopher Nolan explained, citing that the first explosion of the atomic bomb in the Trinity test will be shown onscreen in the upcoming film sans CGI.

IndieWire’s David Ehrlich wrote in the review for “A Compassionate Spy” that the harrowing true story is completely separate from “Oppenheimer.”

“[Director] James doesn’t have access to the same toolkit on a low-budget documentary that someone like Christopher Nolan might have at his disposal while making an $100 million biopic about Robert Oppenheimer,” Ehrlich penned.

He added that “A Compassionate Spy” is “extremely sympathetic toward Hall’s choice,” with director James classifying Ted Hall’s as the “lesser of two evils” when it comes to the international nuclear arms race today. Ehrlich wrote, “The rabid nationalism that might convince some modern viewers to see Hall as a villain is exactly what scared him into contacting the Soviets.”

“A Compassionate Spy” is presented by Participant and is a Mitten Media and Kartemquin Films production produced by Mark Mitten p.g.a., Dave Lindorff, and Steve James. Executive producers are Jeff Skoll, Diane Weyermann, Tim Horsburgh and Gordon Quinn.

“A Compassionate Spy” premieres in theaters and on VOD August 4. Check out the trailer and poster below.

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