It’s been five years since director Benh Zeitlin broke out with “Beasts Of The Southern Wild,” and while we patiently await his next film, he’s been trying his hand at producing. A couple years back he put his name to the Cannes Film Festival entry “Mediterranea.” Now, the upcoming documentary “Brimstone & Glory” not only bears Zeitlin’s credit, but some of his creative magic too.
Directed by Viktor Jakovleski, the film takes audiences into the dazzling National Pyrotechnic Festival in Tultepec, Mexico and helping to lift the stunning the imagery is a score by Zeitlin and Dan Rohmer, who also created the excellent soundtrack for “Beasts Of The Southern Wild.” Here’s the official synopsis:
The National Pyrotechnic Festival in Tultepec, Mexico is a site of festivity unlike any other in the world. In celebration of San Juan de Dios, patron saint of firework makers, conflagrant revelry engulfs the town for ten days. Artisans show off their technical virtuosity, upand-comers create their own rowdy, lofi combustibles, and dozens of teams build larger-than- life papier-mâché bulls to parade into the town square, adorned with fireworks that blow up in all directions. More than three quarters of Tultepec’s residents work in pyrotechnics, making the festival more than revelry for revelry’s sake. It is a celebration that anchors a way of life built around a generations-old, homegrown business of making fireworks by hand. For the people of Tultepec, the National Pyrotechnic Festival is explosive celebration, unrestrained delight and real peril. Plunging headlong into the fire, BRIMSTONE & GLORY honors the spirit of Tultepec’s community and celebrates celebration itself.
“Brimstone & Glory” will be released by Oscilloscope Laboratories and opens on October 27th.