Fire Will Come (11/6 -11/20)

The beauties and terrors of nature—human and otherwise—drive this extraordinary, elemental new film from Oliver Laxe, in which the verdant Galician landscape becomes the setting for forceful internal and external dramas. After making films abroad for years, interrogating the line between filmmaker and subject in such locales as Tangiers (You Are All Captains) and Morocco (Mimosas), Laxe returns to the rustic village in northwest Spain where his grandparents were born to tell the story of Amador (Amador Arias), who has recently served time in prison for arson and has come home to live with his elderly mother, Benedicta (Benedicta Sanchez)—both played brilliantly by nonprofessional actors. Laxe follows Amador’s day-to-day readjustment, immersing the viewer in the deep eucalyptus forests and vast countryside of northwest Spain, building to an astonishing climax fueled by an uncontrollable fury.

The Apohadion Theater and SPACE are pleased to co-present Fire Will Come as part of an ongoing series of virtual film screenings in 2020.

“Fire Will Come is arguably [Oliver Laxe’s] most fully achieved work. Laxe’s films invite us to dwell on faith and mysticism through a constant blurring of the lines between fiction and documentary, filmmaker and subject, landscape and figure, interior and exterior, and spiritual and material worlds.”—Bong Joon Ho, Sight & Sound