Plot

When lightning ignites a firestorm in their redwood forest sanctuary in Northern California, longtime lovers and artists Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle are forced to evacuate and their lives are forever changed.

Lightning ignites a devastating firestorm, forcing artist-activists and Bay Area icons Beth Stephens & Annie Sprinkle - partners for 23 years - from their redwood forest home during the 2020 CZU Lightning Complex fires in Northern California. But the wildfire is just the beginning of their transformative journey, as they craft a cinematic documentary reckoning with the power of fire - with its capacity to destroy and renew. Created through an ecosexual lens (imagining the Earth as a lover), this vibrant story weaves a tale of resilience, queer love, and environmental awakening, narrated by a mythic white peacock. Instead of fighting fire, can we learn to live with fire? Playing with Fire: An Ecosexual Emergency documents the couple's adventures in the wake of disaster, while also honoring the broader communities impacted by ecological and social fires. Enlisting a collective of artists, Indigenous elders, witches, formerly incarcerated firefighters, and educators, Stephens & Sprinkle examine the ways in which queers - and all humans - can support the health of the Earth. The film features an electric score by experimental music composer Guillermo Galindo, Lady Monster's fire tassel-twirling burlesque, a dangerous full-body fire stunt by the artist Cassils, a volcanic fire-play massage with sex educator Barbara Carrellas, and an empassioned ritual by performance poet Guillermo Gómez-Peña. Partially narrated by Boulder Creek's mythical white peacock Albert, the film includes the cremation of Annie's mother's body, an ecosex scene in a burnt forest, and a ceremonial Wedding to Fire by the river -a symbolic embrace of the very element that threatened to destroy them. Playing with Fire is Beth Stephens & Annie Sprinkle's the third film in their trilogy of groundbreaking queer environmental documentaries. It started with Goodbye Gauley Mountain-An Ecosexual Love Story (2013), which critically investigated mountaintop removal coal mining (MTR) in West Virginia, focusing on the people and communities affected and the corporations employing this extraction technique. Their second film, Water Makes Us Wet-An Ecosexual Adventure (2017), explored the pleasures and politics of water, and its conservation, commodification, and sustainability. Building on the international acclaim and success of their first two films, this third chapter is their most epic and daring yet-fusing art, activism, and intimate storytelling in a touching journey through crisis, change, and renewal. This film dares to imagine a future not just of survival, but of rebirth. It is an urgently creative call-to-action as the climate crises worsens, and a powerful portrait of queer resilience in the face of a world in flames.