Lukas Marxt's Wildfire Documentary Heads to Leipzig, Vienna and Amsterdam
Austrian filmmaker Lukas Marxt's new documentary about the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires premieres tomorrow, 27 October, at DOK Leipzig in Germany. The Hollywood Reporter reported the premiere and the film's plans to hope to start conversations about the fires.
The film is called >1.5°C: Pyropolitics and the New World. The title takes its name from the 1.5°C warming limit in the Paris climate agreement, and its second half from the film's central idea. The film opens with a quote from the philosopher Michael Marder about pyropolitics, which means the politics of fire.
Marxt made the film without talking heads, narration or on-screen commentary. Apart from one opening line of text, it is made up of images alone. Marxt directed and edited it. Camera work was shared between Marxt and Carson Davis Brown.
In a Zoom conversation with The Hollywood Reporter, Marxt said the project pushed him into what he called a dystopian space, as his other work has. He described the film's inspiration and visual approach in that interview.
After Leipzig, the film moves on to two more European festivals. It will screen at the Viennale in Vienna, which lists it as a case study of the Los Angeles fires of January 2025. Then it goes to IDFA in Amsterdam, where the festival places it in its Best of Fests section. IDFA calls it a powerful documentary about the consequences of increasingly extreme weather.
DOK Leipzig lists the film as a world premiere. It also appears in the festival's DOK Film Market catalogue, a showcase where sales agents and buyers look at documentaries. The Viennale lists it as a Germany-Austria production.
For a documentary, this run of festivals is the stage where most of the work happens. Programmers choose what gets shown, and buyers in the market decide which films reach cinemas and streaming services in later months. None of the festival listings name a distributor or a release date for the film.
The premiere in Leipzig is the first public showing. The Viennale and IDFA dates will follow in the coming weeks.
