A Thousand Fires

Name: A Thousand Fires
Genre: Documentary
Released: 2021-08-06
Duration: 90 min
Rating: 7.2

2021 · 1h 30m · Documentary

IMDb 7.2

Watch it. This is a fascinating, intimate portrait of resourcefulness and desperation in Myanmar that'll stick with you—a couple literally extracting oil by hand to survive is the kind of documentary premise that reminds you why the format exists. A solid 7.2 score reflects a niche but genuinely compelling watch.

Plot

Using their bare hands, married couple Htwe Tin and Thein Shwe draw oil from a pit they drilled themselves on the land next to their house. There are lots of these “artisanal” oilfields dotted around Myanmar, where people have swapped crop cultivation for selling the oil they pump from the ground by hand.

Related Movies

One Step From Holiness (2019)

✗ Skip it

Documentary

A short doc. movie about Bono meeting with John Paul II.
Night and Fog (1956)

✓ Watch it

Documentary · History

Filmmaker Alain Resnais documents the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps.
Stop Making Sense (1984)

✓ Watch it

Documentary · Music

A concert film documenting Talking Heads at the height of their popularity, on tour for their 1983 album "Speaking in Tongues." The band takes the stage one by one and is joined by a cadre of guest musicians for a career-spanning and cinematic performance that features creative choreography and visuals.
Shoah (1985)

✓ Watch it

Documentary · History

Director Claude Lanzmann spent 11 years on this sprawling documentary about the Holocaust, conducting his own interviews and refusing to use a single frame of archival footage. Dividing Holocaust witnesses into three categories – survivors, bystanders, and perpetrators – Lanzmann presents testimonies from survivors of the Chelmno concentration camp, an Auschwitz escapee, and witnesses of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, as well as a chilling report of gas chambers from an SS officer at Treblinka.
Isle of Flowers (1989)

✓ Watch it

Documentary

A tomato is planted, harvested and sold at a supermarket, but it rots and ends up in the trash. But it doesn’t end there: Isle of Flowers follows it up until its real end, among animals, trash, women and children. And then the difference between tomatoes, pigs and human beings becomes clear.
Koyaanisqatsi (1983)

✓ Watch it

Documentary · Music

Takes us to locations all around the US and shows us the heavy toll that modern technology is having on humans and the earth. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and the exceptional music by Philip Glass.