Set in Central Kalimantan during the dry season, Smoldering explores the friendship between Elin and Bunga, two high school girls navigating adolescence. Elin, a Dayak girl, aspires to leave her village and pursue her dreams. Conversely, for Bunga, who has recently moved from Bandung, the village is a new home she is trying to make sense of. As the weather gets dryer, Elin and Bunga experience the heat at the hire frontier where ideas, myths, feelings, and practices pertaining to flaming landscape collide and overlap. Based on ethnographic research, Smoldering engages with the multifaceted fire governance at the village level, depicting the everyday realities amid burning forests, declining livelihoods, and devastating hre policies.