Otto Reyes, played by Bobby Soto, in a scene that can make audience members feel they are experiencing the perilous reality of the moment. Picture courtesy of London Flair PR.
Succinct Synoptic
After being denied parole, a California wildlands firefighter, Otto Reyes, who is an incarcerated prisoner in a special prison program that allows selected inmates to be wildlands firefighters, tries to call his daughter while he and his crew battle a big one. Fate, in a sense, forces Reyes to confront the true extent of his obligations and demanding roles in life as a father, inmate and firefighter.
The storytelling is meticulously and intricately told and as Director Robin Takao D’Oench’s film unfolds, it becomes clear that his FIRELINE is panoramic in scope and style and approach weaved as an exciting action-adventure fiction piece with sublime attributes of a truth-whole-truth-and-nothing-but-the-truth documentary.
FIRELINE shows us Otto grappling with the challenges and consequences of prison life as it also highlights the pivotal role played by prison labor in California’s firefighting efforts as well as also revealing the limited opportunities for these individuals to pursue life changing careers upon reentering society. That is, they can fight fires while serving prison sentences but once they’ve paid their debts to society – paroled or sentences completed – they are not allowed to become firefighters because of felonious crime convictions.
Picture courtesy of London Flair PR.
FIRELINE is stark, unflinching and ripe with surprises. It has been selected for consideration to compete in the 2024 Oscars. It’s 12 minutes of viscerally impacting action with adrenaline rushes that can’t be denied, resulting in astonishing verisimilitude. In other words, it’s almost as if audiences share and experience the peril and fears that film characters are going through.
FIRELINE screened at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival and subsequently was part of the official selection at the HollyShorts film festival, the latter an annual short film festival that showcases promising independent films from around the world.
{HollyShorts Has Been Named One Of The 25 Coolest Film Festivals In The World}.
FIRELINE was made as part of the Indeed Rising Voices program – an initiative set up to discover, invest in and share stories created by Black, Indigenous And People of Color filmmakers and storytellers (BIPOC). Rising Voices project was created in collaboration with Lena Waithe, Hillman Grad Productions, Ventureland and 271 Films.
FIRELINE has been garnering significant critical acclaim, including winning a VFX award. {Visual Effects, sometimes abbreviated VFX, is the process by which imagery is created or manipulated outside the context of a live-action shot in filmmaking and video production. The integration of live-action footage and other live-action footage or CGI elements to create realistic imagery is called VFX.}
With all due respect to first-responder, action-adventures that many audiences have seen on big and small screens, FIRELINE, in comparison, blows away comparisons – and it does that in 12 minutes.
Is Director Robin Takao D’Oench’s
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Publisher, Editor Gregg W. Morris
Can be reached at gregghc@comcast.net, profgreggwmorris@gmail.com