40° TORINO FILM FESTIVAL
OUT OF COMPETITION
THE FIRE WITHIN: A REQUIEM FOR KATIA AND MAURICE KRAFT
by Werner Herzog
Country: UK, France, Afghanistan, USA, Switzerland
Year: 2022
Duration: 81'
Mt. Unzen, Kyushu, Japan at 3.18pm on 3 June 1991, a pyroclastic flow – a cloud of superheated gases and particles – descended at more than 100 mph from the peak of the volcano, consuming everything in its path. It instantly killed Katia and Maurice Krafft, the legendary French volcanologists who filmed volcanoes and risked their lives to shoot the most spectacular eruptions of the 20th century. They were too close. They were almost always too close. On the day before they died, Maurice said in an interview, “I am never afraid, because I’ve seen so many eruptions in 25 years that, even if I die tomorrow, I don’t care.”
Biography
film director
Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog (Munich, Germany, 1942) grew up in a small town in Bavaria and debuted with the short film Herakles in 1962, before going on to study history, literature and theatre at the University of Munich. Since then, he has made over fifty films, including Aguirre: The Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo, Lessons of Darkness, Grizzly Man, Encounters at the End of the World, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, and Cave of Forgotten Dreams. He is universally acclaimed as one of the greatest filmmakers alive and has received several prestigious awards. He has also participated to the Torino Film Festival, presenting Grizzly Man in 2005, Into the Abyss in 2011, and The Fire Within: A Requiem for Katia and Maurice Krafft in 2022.
FILMOGRAFIA
Lebenszeichen (Segni di vita, 1968), Fata Morgana (id., 1971), Land des Schweigens und der Dunkelheit (Paese del silenzio e dell’oscurità, doc, 1971), Aguirre, der Zom Gottes (Aguirre, furore di Dio, 1972), Jeder für und Gott gegen alle (L'enigma di Kaspar Hauser, 1974), Herz aus Glas (Cuore di vetro, 1976), Stroszek (La ballata di Stroszek, 1977), Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (Nosferatu, principe della notte, 1979), Woyzeck (id., 1979), Fitzcarraldo (id., 1982), Lektionen in Finsternis (Apocalisse nel deserto, mm, doc., 1992), The White Diamond (Il diamante bianco, doc, 2004), Grizzly Man (id., doc, 2005), The Wild Blue Yonder (L’ignoto spazio profondo, doc, 2005), Encounters at the End of the World (id., doc, 2007), My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (id., 2009), Cave of Forgotten Dreams (id., 2010), Into the Abyss - A Tale of Death, a Tale of Life (doc., 2011), Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World (Lo and Behold, doc, 2016), Queen of the Desert (2015), Into the Inferno (Dentro l’inferno, doc., 2016), Salt and Fire (2016), Family Romance, LLC (2019), Meeting Gorbachev (Herzog incontra Gorbaciov, 2018), Nomad: in the Foosteps of Bruce Chatwin (Nomad - In cammino con Bruce Chatwin, 2019), Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds (Fireball - Messaggeri dalle stelle, 2020), The Fire Within: A Requiem for Katia and Maurice Krafft (doc, 2022).
Declaration
film director
“This film is in memory of Katia and Maurice Krafft – volcanologists from the Alsace region in France. Almost everything that we are going to see is footage shot by them. There is something so awe inspiring in it, so never seen before, that attracted me as a filmmaker. They lost their lives together capturing the might of volcanoes. This is their legacy. The lives and the death of Katia and Maurice are documented in films and books, and this here is not meant to be another extensive biography. What I'm trying to do here is to celebrate the wonder of their imagery.”
Cast
& Credits
DIRECTOR, SCREENPLAY, VOICE: Werner Herzog. CINEMATOGRAPHY: Henning Brümmer. FILM EDITING: Marco Capalbo. MUSIC: Ernst Reijseger. ARCHIVE FOOTAGE: Katia e Maurice Krafft. PRODUCERS: Julien Dumont, Mandy Leith, Peter Lown, Cedric Magnin, Alexandre Soullier. PRODUCTION: Titan Films.
CONTACT:
IWonder Pictures acquisitions@iwonder.it
