State of Affairs

In the Magway region of Myanmar, a country home to one of the oldest petroleum industries in the world, live husband and wife Thein Shwe and Htwe Tin. Running an unregulated oil field, they produce a barrel every few days. They wish above all else to see their youngest son succeed, to break the cycle of poverty. Director Saeed Taji Farouky explores the human aspects of the oil industry, examining the point where oil is intimately connected with the human body; where one person reaches into the ground and touches the remnants of millions of years of organic decomposition. A Thousand Fires is a story of intergenerational conflict and compromise, emphasising miniscule detail over epic narrative.