The Fire within - a Requiem for Katia and Maurice Krafft

Produced by

Bonne Pioche Cinéma, Arte France

Production year2022

Programme formatOne-off

Genres

Documentary

Runtime

81m

Synopsis

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, volcanologists and filmmakers from the Alsace region in France. 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.”

Written, directed and narrated by legendary German filmmaker, Werner Herzog, The Fire Within pays homage to the Kraffts, who left an archive of more than 200 hours of footage of their final journal, which is unprecedented in its spectacular and hypnotic beauty.

Werner Herzog has produced, written, and directed more than sixty feature- and documentary films, including Grizzly Man, Invincible, Encounters At The End Of The World, Cave Of Forgotten Dreams. He was named one of the world's 100 most influential people by Time magazine in 2009.