A Story About Fire

A Story About Fire (2026)

燃比娃

The legend of Ran Bi Wa talks about a monkey who was raised by humans. When he sets off to the Holy Mountain to steal fire for humankind, a journey begins from which he will return transformed into a man.

Date of release
2026-04-28
TMDB
9.0 / 10 (1)
Runtime
1h 15m
Genres
Animation, Family, Adventure, Fantasy
Director
Li Wenyu

Casting

Interesting facts

A Story About Fire is a 2025 Chinese animated fantasy film written and directed by Li Wenyu. It is based on Qiang folk religion about Ranbiwa stealing fire for humanity. Shanghai Animation Film Studio animated the film on Xuan paper and it is distributed by the Shanghai Film Group.

Production

A Story About Fire is based on stories from Qiang folk religion. Li Wenyu first heard of the Qiang story of Ranbiwa in 2018. 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. Li conducted research of cultural relics at museums and went to the Ngawa Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture.

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.

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

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. 荒唐谣 (Absurd Ballad), a promotional song, was created by DouDou.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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