The vil­lage of Shol­o­gon is locat­ed in the taiga in north­east­ern Siberia. An extreme heat wave ignit­ed fierce forest fires in the remote region two years ago. At first, res­i­dents remained calm, but the con­fla­gra­tion was get­ting closer and closer. No help could be expect­ed from the state, because the vil­lage lies on the edge of a con­trol zone - too few people settle there for it to be worth the effort to save their homes. The pop­u­la­tion has no choice but to orga­nize itself and hold back the fire as much as pos­si­ble until it rains again. Dif­fer­ent squads, always in con­tact with each other, mon­i­tor the fires, all men and also women fight with the sim­plest means against the “dragon” of the flames.   

The cam­era­man Paul Guil­haume right­ly received an award for his work. The burn­ing land­scape becomes a vivid paint­ing of the threat of cli­mate change. Through the dense smoke, a spec­ta­cle of colors from yellow to red, one fol­lows human sil­hou­ettes and fears and won­ders how they can bear the heat and smoke at all. An intense­ly obser­va­tion­al doc­u­men­tary trans­fers the entire drama to the viewer. 

Alexan­der Abatur­ov is born in Novosi­birsk in 1984. After study­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion sci­ence he worked as jour­nal­ist for the Fed­er­al press agency. In 2010 he obtained an MA in cre­ative doc­u­men­tary film­mak­ing from the Doc­u­men­tary School of Lussas in France. Films: SLEEPING SOULS (2013, 53 min); THE SON (2018, 71 min). 

Direc­tor: Alexan­der Abaturov
Cin­e­matog­ra­phy: Paul Guilhaume
Edit­ing: Luc For­veille, Alexan­der Abaturov
Sound: Myriam René, Sorin Apos­tol, Frédéric Buy
Pro­duc­tion: Petit à Petit Production
Dis­tri­b­u­tion: The Party Film Sales