“Heat is like a death sentence.”
This line, spoken by a Kuwaiti meteorologist in Jacqueline Zundt’s Heat, anchors a film that examines global warming not through explanation but through what the Swiss filmmaker describes as a “sensory experience.”
Premiering in the main competition of Switzerland’s leading documentary film festival, Visions du Lille, Heat transports viewers into an environment where extreme temperatures are changing the way people live and work, exposing the harsh inequalities as the wealthy retreat into an air-conditioned world and those who serve them are forced to endure extreme conditions.
Shot in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Egypt, the film features a handful of characters, including a delivery driver who works 12-hour shifts in a scorching urban landscape, a Kenyan woman who works at an ice lounge in Dubai, a real estate agent who delivers ice and food to stray cats, and a meteorologist who reflects on how rising temperatures have changed daily life.
The film is an evolution of Zundt’s full-length fiction novel “Don’t Allow the Sun,” which premiered at last year’s Locarno Film Festival. The two developed in parallel, each influencing the other.
“While researching my fiction film, I discovered so many interesting details about the subject that I felt invited to make a documentary,” she told Variety.
In “Don’t Let the Sun,” the entire society moves into night life. This is an idea inspired by real working conditions in the Persian Gulf. “Some construction workers already live at night because it’s too hot during the day,” she explains. “I took that idea even further in my fiction work: What would happen if all of our lives were turned upside down?”
While making the documentary, she says she realized that this imagined future was already taking shape. “I was writing about dystopias,” she added. “And I discovered this dystopia in reality.”
Zundt said accessing these environments has proven difficult as temperatures sometimes exceed 50 degrees Celsius, companies are reluctant to participate and filming conditions in the area are tightly controlled.
Filming took place with a skeleton crew, and in some cases formal permission was not obtained, particularly in the shared accommodation of delivery drivers.
Zundt points out that this scene only provides a partial view. “This was actually a good camp compared to other camps. There are some really bad places where 10 to 15 people are kept in rooms without proper air.”
The shooting also drew attention from authorities. During filming in Dubai, the crew was briefly detained and interrogated before being released. Zundt said the interrogation was treated as routine and he received no explanations.
The film’s striking, highly stylized visual language was developed in collaboration with longtime collaborator, cinematographer Nikolai von Gravenitz. Zundt said the goal was for viewers to “feel” the unbearable heat.
“I always want to visually translate the state,” she says. “Not through text or dialogue, but through the physicality of images and sounds, a sort of cinematic mirage.”
Early footage shot in extreme temperatures could not convey the sensations Zundt experienced on the scene. “We were shooting in 50-degree weather, but it wasn’t hot at all,” she recalls.
This realization led her to place more emphasis on sound early in editing. “The editors were working a lot on levels and wind: ‘Does this sound hot? Doesn’t it sound hot?'” she explains. “There are a lot of unpleasant sounds, so we had to make sure it wasn’t too unpleasant and didn’t drive the audience out of the theater,” she jokes.
Visual strategy also plays an important role. The film opens with a real mirage shot near Aswan, Egypt, but atmospheric conditions create optical distortions. Zund specifically looked for that location. “I wanted the opening of the film to visually represent heat. I wanted something powerful,” she says.
Later in the film, a sequence shot in Super 8 introduces the temporal changes she represents. “It’s nostalgia in the present,” she explains. “It’s as if I’m remembering today from the future.”
For Zundt, the decision to focus on the senses reflects her desire to engage with audiences suffering from climate fatigue. “People are tired of being told what’s going on,” she says. “So I wanted to approach it in a different way.”
“Heat” will be premiered at the International Competition on April 20th at Vision du Lille. Produced by Louis Matare of Lomotion AG and co-produced with Real Film of Zünd, the documentary is supported by ARTE and SFR (Swiss Radio & Television). Sales will be handled by Taskovsky Film.
Visions du Lille will be held in Nyon until April 26th.
