This is the definitive film on wildland fire.
If you're a wildland firefighter you will find yourself emotional at experiencing your work and culture finally shown with fidelity and affection.
If you're not a firefighter, you will see:
1) Incredible cinematography of the remarkable natural phenomenon of extreme fire behavior.
2) A heartfelt personal story of a filmmaker's relationship with an extraordinary firefighter and his improbable subsequent journey into filming the elusive and misunderstood world of wildfire and hotshot culture.
3) Important and moving elements of documentary filmmaking that properly situates the subject matter (Interagency Hotshot Crews) in time and history and sociopolitical context, and profound wisdom applicable to wildfire and far beyond.
What a tremendous undertaking: to film what was filmed, over 6 years; then to carefully and truthfully build context around that footage.
I believe this will be an important film right now, as numerous issues are addressed, and for generations to come, as fire itself and firefighting itself both contain timeless elements inexorably tied to physics, nature, and human nature...and as a timepiece marking this era of fire as the other constantly-evolving elements of wildfire develop and change.
This is *the* definitive wildland fire film.