When the Sky Burns: Humarola Tragacielo and the Poetry of Disaster

If the sky could scream, what would it say?
In Humarola Tragacielo, Rodolfo Pérez-Luna answers this, weaving a haunting multimedia poem where fire becomes language and smoke an unwilling scribe.

Through a rich alchemy of image, voice, and subtle digital sorcery, Pérez-Luna resurrects February and March 2023—the months when Chile’s heartlands burned and nearly a third of its population stood under an apocalypse-colored sky. He doesn’t dramatize the fire, he documents their breath. The result? A work that feels less like a short film and more like stepping into a living, grieving travel diary, scorched at the edges.

Pérez-Luna’s voice-over floats like a ghost through this atmospheric tapestry, speaking in a register that is somehow both tender and furious. His words, masterfully suspended between lament and indictment, crackle louder than the understated sound design which, while evocative, could have risked more, dared deeper into the roaring textures of catastrophe.

Photographs from Marcelo Hernández, Alexis Loyola, and Hans Scott stretch, pulse, and move—thanks to the clever digital treatments by producer Diego Silva giving the project a hypnotic, dreamlike momentum. It's as if each burned tree leans closer, begging for an ear, a heart, a witness. The intro and outro cards frame the tragedy with solemnity, reminding us that this is not fiction, not fable, this is our world ablaze.

And yet, for all its lyricism, Humarola Tragacielo yearns for a firmer cinematic hand. One can’t help but wish for more daring in its montage, for a deeper dramaturgical arc that might let the emotional stakes climb as hungrily as the fires it chronicles. At times, the flame flickers when it should roar.

Still, it’s impossible to leave Humarola untouched.
Can poetry fight ecocide? Can a single voice cut through the smoke?
A visceral, mournful, and essential multimedia elegy to a sky swallowed whole and a call to those who still have breath left to protest.