While disarmament experts and antinuclear campaigners may have heard about atomic-bomb survivors, a pair of documentaries about hibakusha that aim to connect with the younger generation were recently completed by two young directors from Costa Rica and Japan.

Erika Bagnarello's "Flashes of Hope" and Takashi Kunimoto's "Traveling with Hibakusha: Across Generations" take different approaches but both feature a group of more than 100 survivors who cruised around the world in 2008 in a project organized by nongovernmental organization Peace Boat.

A series of events across Japan to screen the two films and talk with the directors began April 14, and Bagnarello's film, designed for English-speaking audiences, will be shown in New York on May 1, two days before the start of a key U.N. conference to bolster the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.