Video: Less a Movie than a Cause

Sakharov, HBO, June 20, 8p.m. E.D.T.

On those rare occasions when frontpage headlines coincide with Hollywood shooting schedules, a movie can suddenly be transformed into a political event. It happened in 1979, when The China Syndrome was released the same month as the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island. It occurred again last year, when ABC's The Day After was broadcast just as public concern over the nuclear arms race was reaching a peak. The latest case of such serendipitous timing is Sakharov, a two-hour HBO docudrama on the dissident Soviet physicist and Nobel...