An intimate, vérité portrait of resilience, community, and climate crisis in rural Northern California. In the wake of the 2018 Camp Fire - the deadliest wildfire in California history- Brad Weldon, a fifth-generation resident of Paradise, saves his home with little more than luck, some garden hoses and sheer determination. What begins as a personal act of survival soon transforms into a makeshift communal experiment when Brad opens his doors to over 20 displaced neighbors, friends, and their many dogs, creating a sprawling, improvised household. Stray Embers follows this multi-generational household over five tumultuous years.
Set against the backdrop of increasingly frequent and catastrophic wildfires, Stray Embers captures the profound tension between rootedness and retreat in a community navigating the realities of climate change. While some residents rebuild and forge new rituals - burying ashes beneath fruit trees, transforming debris into shelters - others, like Brad’s friend Lenny, seek solitude and meaning in the scorched wilderness, scavenging gold from newly exposed mines.
Filmmaker expected to attend.