Director Stephen de Villiers
Rated E
Score 5/6
Melbourne Documentary Film Festival

Kangaroo Island, a unique, remote community, where we meet some of the individuals most affected by the 2020 fires and look at the emotional, psychological, and physical toil these individuals had to endure during the fires and their aftermath. Most pressingly, as the story evolves the film discovers the simmering tension and anger on the island, as many in the community feel the fires could have been avoided, or at least had their impact reduced were it not for meddlesome bureaucrats and legacy fire management practices that stood in the way of front-line responders who had the means to put the fires out before they grew into the inferno that destroyed the island.

Okay, you’re always going to have the chance to watch a documentary about bushfires in Australia at an Australian film festival because there is probably going to be at least one because of climate change and documentaries about topics like this are important especially when they talk about important points like having to wait to get permission to go into the national park with a bulldozer part of me would have liked to have seen director Stephen de Villiers push that point a little harder then he did.. As those of you who have read some of my other reviews of other documentaries would know that I usually prefer it when there is a documentarian on screen for the entire documentary asking questions for the entire film. There were some very interesting interview talent used through The Burn Half, I learnt some interesting facts about potatoes . I was amazed by the intensity of the file footage of the fires and the story about kids christmas presents is enough to get anybody a little teary.