An intimate portrait of resilience, community, and climate crisis in rural Northern California
Not for Sale.
Reviews and Festivals
"Offers a cinema-verite portrait of a community's tenacity and survival"
— Pam Grady, San Francisco Chronicle
"Each moment of the film captures a loving realness through gentle observation, stunning cinematography, and a flowing edit... The film's multilayer production effort shines through as we see people grow up, fall in love, and navigate loss— all against the backdrop of the scorched Northern Califonia forests and surrounded by their loved ones. The Camp Fire took so much, but Stray Embers shows what happens in the years that follow."
— Daniel Diaz, Deputy Director, Bay Area Video Coalition
"For anyone touched by wildfire or natural disaster, this films is
especially relevant. Communities everywhere are working through the same
hard questions... Stray Embers brings those issues into human focus.
Filmed in a community that wasn't prepared when the fire came, it shows
what these issues actually look like: not abstractions, but lived
realities shaped by neighbors, housing, recovery, and the choices people
make before and after disaster."
— Bill Tyler, Executive Director, Fire Safe Marin / former Novato Fire Chief
"A stunning microcosm of human interdependence, and the real, unglamorous, dirt-under-the-fingernails work it takes to keep each other safe... The filmmakers capture all of this with a reverence and intimacy that can make an overcrowded living room feel nothing less than sacred. In moments that are quiet, gut-wrenching, mundane, or breathtakingly beautiful, this film shows us what it really looks like-- and what it really takes-- to co-create refuge."
— Gray Chapman, freelance journalist
"Anything but ordinary... The humanity both in front and behind the camera is profound. In our deeply troubled times, this beautiful film is our way through."
— Max Arax, award-winning journalist and author
"Beautifully captures how survivors experience the long tail of disaster recovery... Essential viewing for anyone seeking to understand the long-term impacts of climate disasters on individuals and communities."
— Adrienne Heinz, Ph.D., clinical psychologist
"A film that feels incredibly intimate, like the filmmakers have been accepted into this community as one of their own... Stray Embers is a story about death and rebirth, about being beaten down but finding the strength to get back up."
— Film Threat
"Stray Embers exists as a total immersion into the personal, not unlike a sensory deprivation tank... Stray Embers has the cinematography, the cutting, the characters, and the commotion to combine with the composed to invite care and comfort. That's rare for movies. That's rare for documentary movies. That's what cinema needs. That's what we all need"
— Bill Arceneaux, Moviegoing with Bill
WINNER
Nashville Film Festival, Human Spirit Award
OFFICIAL SELECTION
Big Sky Documentary Film Festival
SF DocFestMountain Lights Film Festival
Monadnock International Film Festival
RiverRun International Film Festival
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