Life in flames

One more summer, the fires have been all over the news in Spain. The heat wave turned 2015 into the worst fire year of the triennium. Forest fires destroy every year in the world an area equivalent to India. Furthermore, experts announce that due to global warming, the number of fires will multiply by three in the upcoming years. Planet Earth is becoming the perfect storm of fire, were high temperatures, dryness and abundant forest mass as fuel converges. This area goes from Australia to California and has a weak point: the Iberian Peninsula, the place in Europe where more fires occur. A land that still has a thin line of forests that are the only shield against desertification that advances from the south, from the Sahara. A border where each tree counts.

Those who fight to stop the advance of desertification also fight a life or death battle against fire. In recent years, half a hundred people have died fighting fires in Spain. David Beriain returns to Discovery MAX to tell the story of those who risk everything to defend the forest in his new series “Life in flames.” A three episode project that offers a unique look at the fires and those who fight against them.

Beriain and his team, led by cinematographer Sergio Caro, follow an elite unit to fight forest fires in one of the most dangerous places in the world to fight them: Andalusia. The team follows the life of BRICA, an elite unit within the Andalusian fire fighting device, INFOCA. They had to deal with very complicated shooting conditions. A scenario where getting the images and sound necessary to tell the story has been a technical challenge of first magnitude in which three years of work have been used.

“We wanted to pay tribute to all those people who leave the best of their lives among the flames. Telling his story, we wanted to show the sacrifice and the price paid by the thousands of people who defend what we have left of nature. If one could choose their heroes, these would be ours. Simple people, country people”, says Beriain about this project.
A documentary production of 93 meters, La Claqueta PC and Canal Sur with the participation of VEO for Discovery MAX and with the help and collaboration of the ICAA, the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Environment and Land Management, the Junta de Andalusia and INAER.