Using found footage, the film documents the great fire that raged in the forest of La Teste de Buch for several weeks in July 2022. Leading to the evacuation of 12,000 people, mainly holidaymakers, images of the fire were widely circulated on social networks. The film examines the filtering effects of social networks and how they make the environmental crisis both visible and invisible.

The film follows the development of the fire, from the moment it starts, filmed by a motorist. As their children play on the sand, holidaymakers film the smoke columns rising above the beach, as if they were part of their vacation memories. Then, after the first evacuations, the images take on a different twist, sometimes poignant, sometimes comical. Firefighters also post videos from the heart of the blaze. Until the fire is partially extinguished, leaving fumaroles on the roadside for months.

The fire takes on a fragmented, intensive, interior existence that, with Deleuze, could be said to be haptic rather than optical. But this very presence on social networks induces filter effects, transforming a news item into an image in a stream, certainly making it less distressing or merely livable, but also masking its reality.

We thought we were in a disaster movie, which is to say a little unreal. Life went on as if nothing had happened, but in a dense, hazy smoke.

Film directors : Pierre Cassou-Noguès et Gwenola Wagon

Graphism : Nuno da Luz