Fire Will Come

Amador (Amador Arias) has been imprisoned for setting fires. When he is released from prison after two years, nobody is awaiting his return. He moves back to his hometown, a small village hidden in the mountains of rural Galicia, to live with his elderly mother, Benedicta (Benedicta Sanchez), and their three cows. Amador does not speak much and remains guarded and stern when the villagers make small talk with him. He becomes aware that there is gossip about his past.

Life goes by slowly and simple, domestic routines are carried out daily. There is hope that tourists might travel to the region, as a group of villagers begin renovating local accommodation. Amador has a chance encounter with Elena (Elena Fernandez), a local veterinarian who has been studying abroad, which hints at a possible romance or at least a meaningful human connection. The rhythm of nature persists until one night when a fire starts to devastate the region and Amador is unfairly blamed for it.

World Premiere Cannes Film Festival 2019 - Un Certain Regard

Winner 'Special Jury Prize' & 'Best Sound Design Prize' Cannes Film Festival 2019 - Un Certain Regard

Winner 'Best Film' Thessaloniki Film Festival 2019

Winner 'Cinematography', Mauro Herce & 'New Actress' Benedicta Sanchez - 2020 Goya Awards

Length 85min

Language Galician with English subtitles

Cert. 12A

Filmography

2019 FIRE WILL COME Special Jury Prize and Best Sound Design Prize Cannes Film Festival, Un Certain Regard

2016 MIMOSAS Critics Week Grand Prix, Cannes Film Festival

2010 YOU ALL ARE CAPTAINS FIPRESCI Prize Directors' Fortnight, Cannes Film Festival

★★★★★

Oliver Laxe conjures a haunting atmosphere, balancing a bare narrative with spectral visuals. The film's often obtuse and laconic narrative plays second fiddle to Laxe's textural mise en scene. But what a mise en scene it is.
Fire Will Come is of an enigmatic and poetic cinema, borne of fierce, barely-contained vision.
Subtly, beautifully, even constructed it shimmers with such grainy, humid tactility that it is almost breathable.'

Christopher Machell,Cinevue

★★★★

'The Cannes jury prize-winning third feature from French-Galician film-maker Oliver Laxe (best known for Mimosas) may be his most accomplished yet. Laxe has a masterly command of rhythm and pacing. Falling eucalyptus trees have a gnarled grandeur; wet soil and sparkling ash are treated with awe. This reverence makes it all the more terrifying when destruction, as the title suggests, inevitably rages.'

Simran Hans, The Observer


Slow cinema, Smouldering with hurt but attentive to Beauty and Kindness. This contemplative Cannes Prize Winner has something to teach us in testing times.'

Nick Hasted, The i paper

'Here's a wonderfully mysterious drama with an inscrutable protagonist and a vivid sense of place.'
'The opening scene is full of primaeval power as a forest of trees is felled by an unseen force.'
'...fabulously unshowy performances that are light on talk but rich with feeling.'
'Like a poetic take on Ken Loach, this is a story in which personal dramas are touched by political tides.'

Ed Potton, The Times

'Riveting...like a meditation on time, death and the terrifying impermanence of the natural world.'
'Perhaps Laxe is a magician, who manipulates the light and shade of the cinema screen with an instinct beyond the measure of mortal man. Following his superb Mimosas, this, his third feature, displays further evidence of this ace filmmaker's potentially sorcerous skills.'
'Fire Will Come...as close to the sacred essence of cinema...as is feasible....leaves scorch marks upon the screen.'

Benjamin Poole, The Movie Waffler


Very, very, visually arresting and interesting film - which in an ideal world should be seen on a big screen.

BBC Radio 5 Kermode and Mayos Film Review

Oliver Laxe's Fire Will Come is a sombre but lovely-looking film that makes its own kind of higher sense in the context of climate change... The film's sheer visual beauty commands attention.

Peter Bradshaw,The Guardian

★★★★

'A sensory feast...The effect is spellbinding.'
'With a documentarian's instincts, Laxe offers no easy answers...he opts for observation over intervention. The result in this eventually fiery film is refreshing.'
..'Fire Will Come is a little slice of life that proves that sometimes less really is more.'

Daniel J Lewis, Time Out

★★★★★

'...Genius movie.
The lyricism of Fire Will Come is conspicuous...astounding. There's Tarkovsky everywhere: the cows of Andrei Rublev, the exuberant green fields of Stalker, the foggy vastness of Nostalghia and the house on fire in The Sacrifice. Plus the meditative pace of all of his films. The operatic soundtrack is sombre and dramatic. All in all, this is the perfect combinination of sound and imagery. A breathtaking movie. Quite literally.'

Victor Fraga, D Movies

'This highly imaginative study in looming disaster balances smart obscurities with genuine tenderness, held at the centre by a winning lead and the camera's considerable gaze. Laxes particular brand of poetic realism is at its fullest expression yet: melancholic, careful, and gripping.

Calum Baker, One Room With A View

Laxe paints an immersive portrait of the Galician countryside, in which the mystery and beauty of the landscape dwarfs the inner turmoil of those who occupy it.

The allure of the Galician landscape in rain, sun and ashes is both backdrop and true backbone to Oliver Laxe's third feature-length film and first to be shot in Spain, which thus functions as two tender homecomings in one.

James Lattimer, Sight & Sound

'Stunning'
'Fire Will Come is pure cinema. Set to the atmospheric ambient sounds of nature and full of naturalistic detail and subtle undercurrents, it is joy to behold.'
filmuforia

…how superbly it is photographed and what brilliance there is in so much of Laxe's directionFire Will Come is a film not to be missed.

Mansel Stimpson, Film Review

"A sublime cinematic experience."
The Upcoming

"It is an immersive, contemplative experience, stripped-down yet vivid, with a strong sense of place...

In non-artistic hands, this event would have ended up being used as news footage, but (DP Mauro Herce) finds the savage poetry in these images, capturing the danger and fury in all their raw scope...

"A mesmerising meditation on man and nature."

Joe Blessing, The Playlist

A deserving prizewinner in Un Certain Regard at Cannes, Oliver Laxe's third feature studies nature and human nature with equal fascination.

You know exactly what climax is coming in Oliver Laxe's rustically beautiful rural parable, but its dreamy, mesmeric power lies in the waiting.

Guy Lodge, Variety

Takes time to ignite but sparks a powerful blaze.

Beautiful, brooding, rigorously unshowy drama.

Quiet but forceful emotional undercurrents surge not only beneath the reticent human interactions of French-born Spanish director Oliver Laxe's hypnotic third feature, Fire Will Come, but also in the camera's observation of animals and nature.

David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter

Oliver Laxe crafts a stupefying piece of work.

An impressive directing feat which more than rewards the patience required earlier on by the extreme bareness of the story, and which successfully prioritises the viewers sensations.

Fabien Lemercier, Cineuropa

Laxe is surely making some greater comment on today's world of snap judgments but this impressive drama, based so effectively in the soil and dirt of this world far aware from metropolitan civilization, shows that this is a part of humanity that has never not existed.

Ed Frankl, The Film Stage

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Download Cannes Press Book

Interview with Oliver Laxe in Variety

Interview with Benedicta Sanchez Vila (in Spanish) La Voz de Galicia

Video interview with Oliver Laxe  Cineuropa

For film bookings please contact Colin Burch at Verve Pictures — [email protected]. Press resources are on the Press page.