“Watch It Burn”, inetrview with the director Makbul Mubarak

December 13, 2023

Makbul Mubarak, director , "Watch It Burn". A family drama, deeply moving and disturbing, set in Indonesia.

"Watch It Burn", inetrview with the director Makbul Mubarak Angelo Acerbi

Podcast | Download

“Watch it Burn” is the new project for a feature film that the director Makbul Mubarak has in the works at the Torino Film Lab 2023, in the ScriptLab Programme. This is the second feature form Mubarak, after premiered in Venice 2022 in the Orizzonti section with “Autobiography“, getting the Fipresci Award.

Always interested in relationship

As the previous film, “Watch it Burn” deals with relationships and the strange mechanisms which rule them. This has always been an interest for Makbul, that here pushes them a little to far on the edge.

Plot

Alma (35) is recently divorced from Rafa, her ex-husband who cheated on her. Healing from a painful betrayal, Alma is increasingly anxious. One day when Alma drives her son home from school, a stranger stops her car, asking her to help bring a man to hospital. Suspicious, Alma denies the request and drives away. Days later, Alma is summoned by the police. Due to her negligence and refusal to help, the man died. Alma is required by Paulina (the dead man’s daughter) to pay blood money. Alma refuses, but Rafa secretly pays her debt. When Alma finds out, she looks for Paulina to ask for the truth. The situation escalates as the two women are very suspicious of each other. When someone sets fire to her house, Alma is sure that Paulina is behind it and reports her to the police. When the actual reason for the fire is discovered, Alma’s world turns upside down. Once a victim, now a perpetrator. Confession is not an option. She doesn’t want Rafa to see her life crumble after divorcing him. Alma explores the haunting lengths to which humans can go to prove that they are right. Alma decides that possibly the only way to prove herself right, is by proving everybody else wrong.

Written by: Angelo Acerbi

Guest

Makbul Mubarak