In the spring of 2016, raging wildfires forced Mucharata Minog and 88,000 others to evacuate their homes in Fort McMurray, a remote northern city located at the centre of Canada’s oil sands region—home to the planet’s third-largest oil reserves. Apocalyptic images of cars fleeing the burning city were seen around the world.

In Ash & Oil: Fort McMurray After the Fire, director Julia Ivanova takes stock of life in “Fort Mac” as Mucharata—a former nanny who drives a two-ton truck on a nearby oil sands site—and other residents slowly make their way back to devastated homes and neighbourhoods and reconsider their futures.

Ash & Oil is Ivanova’s second film about Fort Mac. Her NFB feature documentary, Limit Is the Sky, follows young strivers and dreamers drawn to the northern Alberta city by the region’s once-booming oil and gas sector and will be released this fall.

Ash & Oil is the first collaboration between the NFB and The Guardian’s platform for short international documentary stories.

Link to blog:

Fort Mac Dreamin’