Myanmar has many small oil fields. Families living in neighboring areas have traded arable farming for the sale of oil that they pump out of the ground by hand. A Thousand Fires is both a snapshot of the life of one such Myanmar family and an abstract visual poem dedicated to the Earth. Both parts of the documentary are enchanting, although the mix of the special and the general doesn’t always work well.
A Thousand Fires: Making food between bubbling oil wells and licking flames in Myanmar, documentary with subtle criticism | review
