Have you ever wondered what it’s like to spend your entire career studying volcanoes, chasing lava and dodging geysers of fire? In Fire of Love, we get to see exactly that. The 90-minute documentary, that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, tells the story of Katie and Maurice Krafft, married scientists who captured the most incredible video footage of their shared obsession: volcanoes.

In the first five minutes of the documentary, we find out that their story does not have a happy ending: the Krafft’s died in 1991 during an explosion on Japan’s Mount Unzen. They leave behind a trove of mostly never-before-seen tapes and material of the most spectacular volcano eruptions all over the world. It sets the tone for the rest of the documentary: a story about two French leading volcanologists who, for two decades, risked their lives by walking up to the edge of danger, ultimately killing them.

Director Sara Dosa came across the footage of Maurice and Katia Krafft when she was in Iceland filming her movie The Seen and the Unseen. During a Q&A at the Sundance Film Festival, Dosa recalls being completely enamored with the stunning volcanic landscape while researching imagery archives on Iceland: “We absolutely fell in love with the alive earth. We were so absolutely involved by their imagery, but the more we learned about them as characters, we really thought there’s a story.”

Maurice, in a book that he wrote, has a quote where he says, “For me, Katia and volcanoes, it is a love story.” And with that, we really thought, “Okay, there’s a love triangle that we wanted to center at the heart of our film. We built out our fabulous team and we were off to the races.”

Then came the enormous task of sorting through dozens and dozens of hours of archival material, with some of the footage even dating back to the late 1960s. Producer Ina Fichman says it took months to re-assemble the reels and piece everything together:

“It was a really interesting journey because we discovered that the footage was being housed and taken care of by this very small archive house in France called Image’Est. It was so wonderful to deal with them, and they were so excited that we were making a film because we were the first film team to ever ask to digitize 200 hours of the footage. They’ve seen the film and they’re very proud, and they really feel that it reflects Katia and Maurice’s legacy.”

Katia and Maurice met on a park bench in 1966. They fell in love, got married, and spent their honeymoon on Mount Stromboli, one of three active volcanoes in Italy. Early on in their marriage, they decide to make a career out of their love for volcanoes.

In 1973, they make their first big expedition to Mount Nyiragongo in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Kraffts, well aware of the dangers of their job, often talked about death. One day before they perish on Mount Unzen, Maurice eerily ‘predicts’ their ultimate fate: “I am never afraid because I have seen so many eruptions in 23 years that, even if I die tomorrow, I don’t care.”

The couple died standing next to each other. Their charred remains were found closest to the crater’s rim of all the 43 bodies that were recovered. Together, they traveled to more than 300 volcanoes worldwide and experienced more than 175 eruptions.

What surprised Dosa the most about her protagonists, is how all-consuming their love for volcanoes was: “They were so enthralled and passionate about volcanoes. And of course, their footage reflects that. You really see their love for volcanoes and volcanic landscapes through the lens. But there’s these other moments of life everywhere, a shot of Katia sitting down in an inner tube, a raven coming and grabbing something shiny out of somebody’s hand, a Komodo dragon eating a dead animal. They were so passionate about volcanoes, but also just passionate about life and clearly, passionate about savoring moments and each other.”

Fire of Love is presented in the US Documentary Competition of the 2022 Sundance Film Festival.