The Oppenheimer story that won't win Oscars

The success of the film Oppenheimer has shone a spotlight on the work done by scientists in New Mexico as they developed the first nuclear bomb. But 80 years later, some local people say their story remains untold.

"Both my great grandfathers had cancer, my two grandmothers had cancer, my father had three different cancers, my sister has cancer," Tina Cordova says mournfully as she flicks through an old family photo album in her living room.

"I've lost count of the aunts and uncles and cousins who've had cancer. And my family is not unique."

Ms Cordova lives in Albuquerque, about a two-hour drive from where the atomic bomb was developed.

She's one of the "Downwinders," a term used to describe the communities who claim to have been affected by radiation from the Trinity Test, which was the world's first detonation of a nuclear weapon in the New Mexican desert.

The test is the centrepiece of Christopher Nolan's box office hit, Oppenheimer, which follows the physicist of the same name and his team of scientists and engineers who rushed to develop this bomb.

The movie, which is expected to win more awards at the Oscars this Sunday, examines the moral struggles of the men and women who changed the world with the work they did in the desert under a cloak of secrecy.

But Ms Cordova says the film reveals nothing of the legacy of the atomic bomb she says her family have been living with for generations.

The detonation is a memorable moment in the film, as scientists are handed dark glasses and gather on a breezy night to watch their theories and calculations become reality.