‘>1.5°C Pyropolitics And The New World’ review: Slight but urgent doc observes the human cost of climate change

Dir: Lukas Marxt . Germany/Austria. 2026. 73mins

There is a terrible beauty in watching the quivering flames of a destructive fire. Austrian artist and filmmaker Lukas Marxt leans into that fascination with >1.5°C Pyropolitics And The New World, an immersive documentary capturing the Los Angeles wildfires of early 2025. When the film’s modest scope expands, it develops into a sobering portrait of climate change, its challenges and consequences. The film may well find a home at specialist festivals and documentary channels following a world premiere in DOK Leipzig competition.

 Marxt’s observations are drawn together into something more profound

Marxt has spent the bulk of his career exploring the impact of human activity on the natural environment in shorts like Valley Pride (Locarno 2023) and Reign Of Silence (2014), and feature Among the Palms, The Bomb (2024).  >1.5°C continues that exploration by providing a front line view of a world ablaze. In an opening sequence, the crackle, hiss and spit of a hungry blaze is heard during a pitch black night that is illuminated by the tangerine glow of distant smoke. Firefighters attempt to tame and control the inferno as they fell trees, douse flames and try to create an effective fire break.

The film is purely observational, initially offered without commentary or narration. Marxt and his camera are right in the thick of events as we witness firefighters heading towards danger, the forming of human chains that pass instructions and take action. There is no panic or hysteria, just a sense of trained professionals doing their job. The soundscape plays a key role in conveying what is being experienced, from the sharp wallop as gallons of water are released from a plane to the clang of distant alarm bells or the silence of empty streets where the residents have been evacuated.

Whilst intriguing, Marxt’s footage starts to feel as if it might not be sufficient to sustain a feature film – but then he broadens the scope to convey subsequent scenes of recovery and shelter. Warehouses are stocked with bottled water, food and donations of clothes. Medical supplies arrive, and volunteers are hard at work. An animal shelter gently tends to a distressed dog. The community rallies and there is a hope in the way that a disaster can bring out the best in people. 

The physical aftermath of the blaze is shown in the smouldering ruins of lost homes captured in the eerie quiet of dawn’s first reckoning. The camera slowly pans along a neighbourhood of charred buildings., capturing a lone chimney or a blackened vehicle – all that remain of what was once someone’s home. There is also a sense that the smallest spark or cruelest wind could easily rekindle everything. 

Overheard conversations, instructions, random conversations and some television reporting provide the only dialogue in the film. Marxt is simply there to observe and captures some telling images from a Bank Of America branch engulfed in flames to tattered American flags fluttering in the breeze. Yet his observations are drawn together into something more profound by the closing titles. We see that people survive, communities endure and there is a resilience in the face of this kind of adversity.

On screen text informs us that extreme fire events have doubled in frequency and intensity over the past 20 years. An area larger than India burns across the planet every year, consuming vast areas of forest, grasslands and settlements from Australia to Indonesia and the Amazon rainforest. As Marxt’s documentary shows, people do cope – but the unspoken question becomes where is the political will to urgently tackle the dangers of climate change when it already feels too late?