United Nations in Popular Culture - in Film

In Film

The United Nations is the setting for a mouse variation thereof called the Rescue Aid Society in the Disney movie The Rescuers. Also, in the Donald Duck cartoon, Donald in Mathmagic Land, the United Nations building is used as an example of the usage of the mathematical golden rectangle in modern architecture.

Alfred Hitchcock, director of the 1958 film North by Northwest, wanted to film at the UN but did not have permission, so actor Cary Grant was filmed by a hidden camera while approaching the entrance. Other UN scenes were done using a sound stage and special effects.

The 1953 Columbia Pictures B-movie "The Glass Wall" was the first Hollywood movie filmed on location at the New York UN headquarters building designed by Le Corbusier and Niemeyer, and completed in 1952. The 2005 film The Interpreter was filmed on location in the UN. It features Nicole Kidman as a UN interpreter who inadvertently overhears a plot to assassinate a fictional African dictator (the character appears to be based on Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe). Then-Secretary General Kofi Annan commented on The Interpreter that "the intention was really to do something dignified, something that is honest and reflects the work that this Organisation does. And it is with that spirit that the producers and the directors approached their work, and I hope you will all agree they have done that."

The 2010 political documentary film U. N. Me features footage surreptitiously shot inside the U.N. headquarters building without permission. The 2008 biopic Che also shot scenes inside the UN Headquarters. Shots of Ernesto "Che" Guevara speaking at the UN General assembly were filmed before the UN underwent major renovations in 2006.

The United Nations Godzilla Countermeasures Force appeared in the Godzilla film series.

In the movie The Art of War, Wesley Snipes portrays an agent of a fictional UN espionage agency.

The British film In the Loop starring Peter Capaldi featured the UN headquarters extensively.

In Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Admiral Nelson goes to the United Nations with his plan to save the world from the burning Van Allen belt.

In Russell Doughten's end-times movie A Thief in the Night, the UN adds another title to its new distinction as a one-world government. It is now called UNITE, or the United Nations Imperium of Total Emergency.

In the Animatrix short film The Second Renaissance, the UN rejects the machine nation Zero-One's applications for membership. The rebuff sets off a war that would later end with the rout of the humans by the machine army. The UN headquarters is destroyed by a machine ambassador signing an armistice document.

In The Day the Earth Stood Still, a race of extraterrestrials sends a representative, Klaatu, the film's protagonist, to make contact with the human race by communicating with world leaders at the United Nations.