Our Planting Seeds pick for August is A Thousand Fires. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the film's director Saeed Taji Farouky, a Palestinian-British award-winning documentary filmmaker and artist specialising in long-term human rights projects, hosted by Fatima Serghini.
A Thousand Fires is a mesmerising and beautifully shot account of parents working hard in the hand-drilled oil fields of central Myanmar, in order to give their son a better future. But when he quits school to follow his dream of becoming a football player, the family worries that he's throwing his life away. Part poetic meditation, part realistic ethnographic study, the film manages to both explore the specificities of Myanmar's recent history and exploitation of its 'black gold', and the wider philosophical, religious, and cultural ramifications of one family's choices and plight.
The film was nominated for Best Documentary at IDFA and at Cannes' Critics Week and won the Critics' Award at Locarno.
"Mesmerising study of Myanmar’s homemade oil wells" - The Guardian
"[A film] of beguilingly vivid sensory impact" - Screen Daily
"Beguiling, Epic Portrait of a Family in Flux" - The Film Stage
