A Thousand Fires

Runtime: 88'

Expected release: November, 2021

Production stage: Post-Production

Budget: €520,000 (90% in place)

Looking for: festivals, sales agents / distributors, buyers

Synopsis:

A Thousand Fires is a tale of family, oil, and life cycles in Myanmar’s artisanal oil fields. Parents Twe Tin and Thein Shwe struggle daily in the unregulated oil industry, their futures and fortunes governed by a complex web of fate, luck, karma, and astrological magic.

Director’s profile:

Saeed Taji Farouky is a Palestinian/British filmmaker who has been producing work around themes of conflict, human rights and colonialism since 2004.
His previous documentary, TELL SPRING NOT TO COME THIS YEAR, premiered at the Berlinale 2015 where it won the Audience Choice Panorama award and the Amnesty Human Rights Award.
His films focus on exile and the lingering trauma of conflict. He tells intimate, personal stories with an emphasis on humanism, and its mirror image: surrealism. Saeed participated in the Edinburgh International Film Festival talent lab and the Torino Script Lab with his first fiction feature project.

Producer’s profile:

Estelle Robin You has (co-)produced over 20 films internationally (Sweden, Greece, Mali, Canada, UK, Belgium…), supported by funds such as Aide aux Cinémas du Monde, Sundance documentary fund, HotDocs-Blue Ice, IDFA Bertha, Field of Vision amongst others. Her productions have been shown on TVs (ARTE, France TV, RTS, SVT, YLE …) and theatres worldwide as well as major documentary festivals such as IDFA, Hot Docs, Visions du Réel, Cinéma du Réel and most recently CPH:DOX with the DOX:AWARD winner THE LAST SHELTER by Ousmane Samassékou. Estelle is a partner in the company Point du Jour – Les films du balibari, a merger between the companies after 6 years of partnership. She has been a mentor for workshops such as Produire au Sud (Agadir Fidadoc) and Eurodoc (regional groups), and is a EAVE producer’s worksop alumni, where she developed A THOUSAND FIRES with Saeed Taji Farouky in 2016.