Director’s Statement

I grew up in the greater Los Angeles area, where the premonition of the “Big One” was always circling. It referred to an inevitable earthquake. But floods, fires, droughts, and apocalyptic narratives of all kinds have made their home here—made all the more surreal by the daily promise of sunshine. And year after year fires have become all the more normal. From the occasional school closures as a kid due to falling ash to the now nearly yearlong threat of fire in our backyard. It’s a fact of life.

I’ve been evacuated from my parents’ home four times. I have friends and acquaintances who have lost everything. The scale of destruction across the state is hard to grasp, yet we carry on, as if it won’t happen to us. There’s a cognitive dissonance in trying to live a normal life while knowing disaster is inevitable. And yet all this destruction is magnetic. We watch it from the safety of our homes.

Fire, especially, draws us in—the flicker, the warmth, the light.

Even before the fires of 2025, this sense of potential loss was with me. I remember pulling away from my house as a kid, the mountain behind it glowing orange. The smallest things left behind carried the most weight—my baseball cards under my bed, the posters I’d spent years collecting, every little thing I couldn’t carry with me. But what has become clearer over time is that its not the objects I would miss—it is the people. And the place itself. Its my neighbors. Its the place at the dinner table I’d eaten 1000x.

This project is about that tension—the struggle of letting go. Of learning a language to cope with that possibility. The denial, the resistance, the grief, but also the unexpected joy in saying goodbye. Do we keep dancing because we’re strong? Or because we don’t know what else to do? This isn’t a critique of collective ignorance or neglect in the face of climate change. It’s an exploration of a communal language, a celebration of life in uncertain times. This film is an homage—to a place, to a sense of home, to the forces beyond our control. And despite whatever pain, loss, and heartbreak lie ahead, I know we will move forward —not in spite of each other, but because of each other. For me, this is also an homage to community. It is precious because it will not be forever.