• Director(s):

    DUFFAU (OLIVIER)

  • Producer(s):

    ARTE FRANCE, AUTEURS ASSOCIES

  • Territories:

    Worldwide.

  • Production year:

    2005

  • Language(s):

    German, French

  • Rights:

    NON-THEATRICAL, TV, VOD, DVD, INTERNET

Due to El Nino, huge forest fires have devastated the entire Sumatra ecosystem. The Kubus have always lived in the forest. Their increasingly reduced space forces them to flee deeper into the higher regions of the jungle or to cities and the regions round about.

In Sumatra and in the rest of the Indonesian archipelago, burning fields to clear land is very common. Yet in the autumn of 1997, this practice sparked uncontrollable forest fires, the likes of which had never been seen before. Some six million hectares of forest were reduced to ashes resulting in a dense and permanent blanket of pollution hovering over Asia called the Asian Brown Cloud. Satellite images revealed how most fires were associated with forest concessions or agroindustrial plantations. Yet the real cause of these fires is severe and unusually long spells of drought in the region due to global warming and forest destruction. Today, fires are still burning in Sumatra. Several provinces of the equatorial island are experiencing permanent and devastating infernos because of underground peat veins that run through the earth interior.