10,000 migrant deathsExternal link<\/a> reported annually in the Gulf states, many of which are attributed to life-threatening heat, labour conditions, and air pollution.<\/p>\n>> Jacqueline Z\u00fcnd talks about Don\u2019t Let the Sun in last year\u2019s Locarno Film Festival: <\/p>\n
External Content <\/p>\n
Climate speaks for itself<\/p>\n
Inevitably, these jarring disparities turn\u00a0Heat\u00a0into a highly political film about ecology, economy and a new form of human vulnerability, something Z\u00fcnd initially didn\u2019t set out to make.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was always focused on social issues,\u201d says the director of tender films such as Visions du\u00a0R\u00e9el-winner\u00a0Goodnight Nobody\u00a0(2010) and Where We Belong\u00a0(2019), which premiered at the Locarno Film Festival. However, spending so much time in the Gulf \u201cpushed me to make a truly political film.\u201d<\/p>\n
Quite consciously, though,\u00a0Z\u00fcnd\u00a0never translates her critical observations into a scorching pamphlet. Rather, she lets the Gulf\u2019s climate speak for itself. Only on select occasions does a voice-over narration of the four human protagonists pierce through the immersive scenery, capturing how these lonely souls drift all by themselves through the desert heat.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t want to be polemical, as it has the risk of turning\u00a0Heat\u00a0into merely a climate film,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd let\u2019s be honest: climate protests have lately somewhat slipped of fashion.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Instead, together with cinematographer Nicolai von Graevenitz and sound designer Oscar van Hoogevest, she crafted a deeply immersive audio-visual experience that stylistically conveys the sweltering heat, as if\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0also radiating from the screen.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Heat\u00a0does contain awe-inspiring vistas of a neon-lit petrol city that spectacularly illuminates the sandy regions at night, but Z\u00fcnd\u00a0often prefers to film the nearly abandoned streets and soulless, yet\u00a0conveniently air-conditioned shopping malls that truly dictate the climate of this region.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn the surface you have all this glamour, but if you take one look underneath that surface, you\u2019re immediately struck by a sharp contrast,\u201d she says. \u201cI was really shocked by how dystopian all of it actually is behind that veneer of luxury.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Dystopia](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Heat-2.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Dystopia behind the veneer of luxury: a scene from Heat. <\/p>\n
Taskovski Films <\/p>\n
Dystopia now<\/p>\n
You might call\u00a0Heat\u00a0an accidental dystopian film or, as the director puts it, a meditation on \u201cthe dystopian world we already live in.\u201d Ironically, her recent feature film\u00a0Don\u2019t Let the Sun\u00a0explicitly flirts with dystopian cinema, depicting a world so hot that people can no longer\u00a0step out of their homes during the day.<\/p>\n
Z\u00fcnd\u00a0was surprised that people labelled that film as science fiction, \u201cbecause I never thought of it that way.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we are already close to these realities,\u201d she says. \u201cWhat is more interesting to me is that I made a dystopian story in fiction, and then I found a dystopian world already existing in the Arabian Gulf. It\u2019s a very thin line.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Faithfully capturing the dystopian heat turned out to be the biggest challenge.\u00a0It turns out one\u00a0can\u2019t\u00a0just place a camera outside on a scorching\u00a0hot day\u00a0and obtain convincing imagery that conveys the oppressive climate.<\/p>\n
She paints a vivid picture of the shoot: \u201cStanding outside on a 48\u00b0C-day with a humidity of 60%, after about 20 minutes you start to feel so dizzy, you\u2019re forced to go back inside. Even the cameras would shut down after half an hour.\u201d And yet, rewatching that footage in the editing room could lead to disappointing results.<\/p>\n
\u201cOften it didn\u2019t look hot at all, as if we were filming a mild March afternoon.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"In](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/HEAT-3.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
In Jacqueline Z\u00fcnd\u2019s documentary, as well as in her feature, Don\u2019t Let the Sun, the heat goes beyond the thermometers and becomes a social, economic, geological, and architectural force. <\/p>\n
Taskovski Films <\/p>\n
Picturing the heat<\/p>\n
To\u00a0make\u00a0a genuinely searing film,\u00a0Z\u00fcnd\u2019s\u00a0team travelled to the Aswan desert in Egypt, where the unique climate conditions produce brilliant yet terrifying optical effects of refracted light. Sound designer Van Hoogevest also had the task of making the invisible heat palpable on the soundtrack.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe layered hundreds of sounds on top of each other,\u201d\u00a0says Z\u00fcnd, recalling the post-production of the film. \u201cWe needed sounds that draw you in, but that would also be so piercing that it almost starts to hurt a little bit. Because physically, being outside in such heat hurts a lot.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
By inhabiting these conditions herself,\u00a0Z\u00fcnd\u00a0cannot help but bring enormous care to the people who\u00a0actually have\u00a0to weather the heat of Dubai. You\u00a0can\u2019t\u00a0help but feel anguish for the delivery worker, always shown with his motorcycle helmet on, which makes the heat even more crushing for him.<\/p>\n
More visually arresting are the absurd working conditions in which Sophie, a young migrant worker from Africa, finds herself. As the hostess of an ice bar, she traverses a 40\u201350\u00b0C\u00a0city\u00a0on a daily basis\u00a0to step into an enclosed space cooled down to -6\u00b0C,\u00a0so rich patrons can enjoy a chilled beverage in front of towering ice sculptures.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just wanted to visit this strange place,\u201d says Z\u00fcnd. \u201cWhen we encountered Sophie there, I could immediately imagine how horrible it must be to work every day under such conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Born](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/336383642_highres.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Born in 1971 in Zurich, Jacqueline Z\u00fcnd studied at the London International Film School and dedicated most of her career to documentary filmmaking. Her feature film debut Don\u2019t Let the Sun (2025) won a Pardo award for Best Performance at Locarno Film Festival last year. Z\u00fcnd is a member of the Swiss and European Film Academies and works as a lecturer at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK).<\/p>\n
Keystone \/ Christian Beutler <\/p>\n
Hot solitude<\/p>\n
What this cast of characters\u00a0ultimately reveals\u00a0is how stifling heat creates a wedge between human beings. The loneliness on display is a theme that, according to\u00a0Z\u00fcnd, runs through all her work, \u201ceven if I never start with that intention.\u201d<\/p>\n
For this exact reason, the director\u00a0maintains\u00a0warm\u00a0connections with all the people she films, as she believes documentary filmmaking is not only about extracting images, \u201cbut also about giving everything back, even when the film is already finished.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
With Dubai currently caught up in a conflict between Iran and the United States and Israel,\u00a0Z\u00fcnd\u00a0is following the situation even more closely. She is happy to report that Sophie has since made it back to Africa, while the delivery man is still surviving the scorching streets of Dubai.<\/p>\n
For a filmmaker who insists she never set out to make a climate film, Heat ultimately functions as a more humanist effort. Z\u00fcnd\u00a0shows us that the climate dystopia we imagine might happen in the future is already a reality for marginalised people right now.<\/p>\n
Seen in that light, she wants to cinematically \u201crebuild our consciousness through the subconscious.\u201d And with global temperatures rising,\u00a0Heat\u00a0is the rare film that radiates such urgency without overtly insisting on it.<\/p>\n
Edited by Virginie Mangin & Eduardo Simantob\/gw<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From 50\u00b0C to -6\u00b0C: a cold environment becomes a privilege for the ultrarich in “Heat”. Taskovski Films With\u00a0Heat,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134397,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[26],"tags":[1162,44773,44772,17050,703,25438,44774,39647,39,44775],"class_list":["post-134396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-persian-gulf","tag-article","tag-beat-culture","tag-beat-swiss-cinema","tag-cinema","tag-environment","tag-film-festival","tag-meteorological-disaster","tag-multi","tag-persian-gulf","tag-production-type-external"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116650995296218828","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134396\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"From](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/heat_2026.png\")
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