Burn

Burn (2012)

One Year on the Front Lines of the Battle to Save Detroit

A character-driven, action-packed documentary about Detroit, told through the eyes of the Detroit firefighters, the men and women charged with the thankless task of saving a city that many have written off as dead.

Date of release
2012-11-01
TMDB
7.4 / 10 (26)
Runtime
1h 26m
Genres
Documentary
Director
Tom Putnam, Brenna Sanchez

Casting

Interesting facts

BURN: One Year on the Frontlines of the Battle to Save Detroit is a 2012 American documentary film, produced and directed by Tom Putnam and Brenna Sanchez. It focuses on Engine Company 50 of the Detroit Fire Department, and the city of Detroit as it faces an economic collapse and rising arson and fire rates. The film was executive produced by Denis Leary and Jim Serpico through their production company, Apostle, as well as Steve Tihanyi and Morgan Neville. A sequel titled Burn X was released in 2022.

Development

Putnam and Sanchez began work on the film after learning about the November 2008 death of Walter Harris, a Detroit firefighter who was killed while fighting a blaze in a vacated home. Wondering why firefighters would risk their lives to save an abandoned building in a city that has 80,000 abandoned structures, Putnam and Sanchez began investigating the state of the Detroit Fire Department. They began shooting with Engine 50 in August 2009.

Putnam and Sanchez started asking for corporate donors and taking tax-deductible online donations. General Motors made a donation in December 2010 to start filming while fundraising continued. Over the next 13 months, until January 2012, the film crew was embedded with the firefighters. With the exception of two of its Directors of Photography, BURN employed exclusively local crew.

Denis Leary and Jim Serpico (Rescue Me) joined as BURN's executive producers in 2011.

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