A Story About Fire

Awubaji, the chief of a tribe, went to a mountain to bring fire back to humanity. She dies after bringing back Ranbiwa, a monkey. Ranbiwa grows up and is sent to the mountain with a wolf. They traverse the dangers of the mountain before finding fire in a cave. The wolf sacrifices itself to save Ranbiwa from a monster. Ranbiwa, who has been losing his fur, rises from ashes and becomes human.

• Yang Haoyu as adult Ranbiwa^[1]
• Zhou Xun as Awubaji^[1]
• Bei Yile as young Ranbiwa^[1]
• Kang Chunlei as the wolf^[1]

A Story About Fire is based on stories from Qiang folk religion.^[1] Li Wenyu first heard of the Qiang story of Ranbiwa in 2018.^[2] Ranbiwa, who resembles a monkey, is the son of the god of fire and a human chief and brings fire to humanity after stealing it from the gods.^[3] Li conducted research of cultural relics at museums and went to the Ngawa Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture.^[2] Research trips were also conducted by the production to Wenchuan, Mao, and Li counties.^[4]

Li started work on the film and presented an image and a simple text description at the Nanjing International Animation Festival Project Market in 2019. Su Da and Chen Bo, the director and deputy director of Shanghai Animation Film Studio, selected Li's project out of 30 submissions.^[2]

Production took five to six years.^[5][4] A grant was given to the production by Shanghai Cultural Development Foundation in 2022.^[6] This was the first animated film Li directed^[6][7] and he also wrote and edited it.^[1] A Story About Fire is the first animated film hand-painted on Xuan paper^[8] and more than 50,000 sheets of rice paper were used.^[9] Qiang embroidery art, which Li discovered during his research, was also used.^[3]

The band 野孩子乐队 (Wild Children) created the soundtrack over the course of two years. The band travelled to a Qiang village to collect music and instruments.^[2] 荒唐谣 (Absurd Ballad), a promotional song, was created by DouDou.^[10]

An incomplete version was shown at the work in progress section of the 2024 Annecy International Animation Film Festival.^[11] A Story About Fire premiered at the 75th Berlin International Film Festival^[12] on 18 February 2025.^[6][7] It was the third time that a film by the Shanghai Animation Film Studio was shown at Berlinale, after Three Monks in 1982, and The Fight Between the Snipe and the Clam in 1984.^[3][6] Shanghai Film Group theatrically released the film in China on 28 April 2026.^[10] Global sales were managed by Parallax Films.^[1]

The China Film Pavilion (CFCC) at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival showed A Story About Fire, Shanghai Wonton, and It's OK on 13 May, and the CFCC later screened A Story About Fire at the École Supérieure de Réalisation Audiovisuelle on 16 May.^[13] A Story About Fire was shown at the São Paulo International Film Festival, Asia Pacific Screen Awards, Melbourne International Film Festival, Raindance Film Festival, Shanghai International Film Festival, and Haifa International Film Festival.^[14]

Atsushi Ohara, writing for The Asahi Shimbun, compared the art style to Little Tadpoles Looking for Mama (1960) and The Cowboy's Flute (1963), but felt that A Story About Fire was underwhelming.^[15]