Are we ready to talk about the 2019/2020 Black Summer bushfires yet?
Judging from releases like ABC’s Fires miniseries and upcoming Prime Video doco Burning, it would seem that Australian filmmakers now have enough distance from the tragic, record-breaking bushfire season to assess the scale and effect of all that loss. And amongst those opportunities to see Black Summer in a revelatory new light, feature-length documentary A Fire Inside could be one of the most astounding.
A Fire Inside is currently screening in select Australian cinemas, and arrives at this year’s Sydney Film Festival on November 5. It takes an inspirational tone, focusing on the volunteer ‘bystanders that became upstanders’ and faced ‘apocalyptic’ devastation…before being plunged into pandemic, just as the nation was trying to recover.
Directed by Justin Krook and Luke Mazzaferro, A Fire Inside has been playing in Australian cinemas since October 7, in regions where theatres aren’t closed due to COVID regulations. Sydney audiences can soon attend three screenings of A Fire Inside from November 5, as part of the stacked SFF lineup (which also includes Burning, a bushfire doco double-feature if you’re up to it). Or, excitingly, the film is available on demand through SFF from November 12, for $15 online.
The trailer above puts a human face to the towering acts of bravery involved in minimising the bushfires’ ruin, choosing a few select perspectives from those on the ground. SFF describes the film’s humanistic goal of speaking to “volunteers, farmers, publicans and pensioners, uncovering stories of devastating heartbreak but also of astonishing resilience.”
Use our session-time finder below to figure out where you can watch A Fire Inside soon, or hit up SFF’s on demand streaming service to watch it from home on November 12. There’s also a hardcover book tie-in available from photographer Matthew Abbott, capturing the disaster’s most striking moments and expounding on ‘The Power of the Human Help Reflex’.
