Since its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival last January, “The Fire of Love” has become the hottest, most talked about and appreciated documentary of the year. After cinematic screenings at the Dokaviv Festival and the Jerusalem Festival, it will be shown here in commercial distribution this coming weekend, so that the general public will also be able to enjoy this wonder.
The film was directed by Sarah Dossa, and it presents the story of Maurice and Katya Kraft, volcanologists who divided their personal and professional lives, and remained together through fire and water – in the most literal sense of the word. They met in the mid-1960s and for 25 years did not shy away from any danger, and explored every possible active volcano – from Japan to Iceland.
If that’s not enough, the two also look like they came out of Wes Anderson’s “Deep Water”, which makes them perfect cinematic characters, rich in style that can no longer be found today. Previously, an archive clip with their participation emerged in Werner Herzog’s film, and now comes Dosa’s gem, which dedicates the entire stage to them.
“Even though I’ve already dug into the story of Morris and Katya so much, every time I think about it I’m amazed anew,” says Dosa in an interview on the occasion of the distribution of the film. “It sounds like a fairy tale: they were two soul mates, with a common and very specific interest, who happened to be born almost in the same years, and at a distance of a few tens of kilometers from each other in Alsace, France. They met by chance, and never separated. Is there such a thing as a ‘soul mate’ ? Is there such a thing as ‘the love of your life’? Are there couples who are meant to be together? At least according to their case, the answer is yes.”
Katya and Morris left behind groundbreaking research and also about 50 hours of archive footage, which were the basis for Dossa’s film. “Everything they photographed was important to them, and my job was to understand why it was important to them,” she says. “When they photographed the eruption of a volcano, it was easier to understand, but when they photographed Katya looking at the sun, it was more complex. Each of the archive segments embodies something they learned about life. They all carry some existential weight with them.”
If you could ask Morris and Katya one question, what would you ask?
“This is a question I think about a lot. There are no talking heads in the film, but during the investigative phase we spoke to 15 people who were close to both of them, and this influenced the script. Maurice and Katya represent a romantic ideal in my eyes, and I wonder if that is true or just an illusion. I think they never They didn’t look back, but maybe this is a mistaken thought? I wonder if they had any regret after all, and if it was a small or big regret. I keep thinking of new questions I would ask them, and I have a deep sadness that I didn’t meet them.”
Dossa, born in California, studied at Wesleyan University, from which Lin Manuel Miranda also recently graduated, and surprisingly did not study cinema but anthropology. “My mother teaches anthropology and this is something that has accompanied me all my life, even now,” she says. “What interests me in my films is to understand how people find meaning in nature, and studying anthropology helps me understand that.”
All of this may sound as if it is an academic and dry film, but “The Fire of Love”, as it deserves its name, is hot and full of romance, and is one of the most artistic, cinematic and creative docuseries of the year. Among other things, Dossa boasts here charming animation clips, narration by the multidisciplinary artist Miranda Jolie and a soundtrack by Nicola Gooden, half of the duo Air. “We wanted music that would further enhance the emotional effect, not only of the volcanoes but also of the love story,” says the director about creating the soundtrack. “We wanted a French composer who would have some kind of connection to the story or the period in which it took place, and that’s how the idea of Eyre came up, and we listened to their music anyway when we started working on the film.”
If Maurice and Katya were alive, what would they say about the climate crisis and the state of the world?
“They must have been very disappointed. They were born during World War II or right after it and grew up in the Vietnam War, so it would have saddened them to see that there are still wars, what’s more, the wars of humans seem so small and miserable compared to the volcanoes. The ecological crises would also break the Their hearts. After all, they dedicated their lives to people loving the earth and taking care of it.”
There are quite a few Hollywood movies about volcanoes. Did you try to avoid their clichés?
“We always joked that we would screen ‘Volcano’ at the closing party of the production. Hollywood films use the volcano as a kind of arch-villain, and I wanted to avoid that. For me, volcanoes are neither good nor bad. They are complex characters. They are the force of creation and the force of destruction. Morris would say that each volcano has its own personality, and I also like to think of them in this way, which is very different from their representation in Hollywood.”
In your opinion, is it a spoiler to write that Maurice and Katya died?
“Death accompanied their whole life. When you’re chasing volcanoes, you know that life can end in an instant. I built the film as a story of a race against the clock, and I mention the death of Maurice and Katya six minutes after the beginning of the film, so in my eyes it’s not a spoiler, but An essential part of the story. Feel free to write that they died.”