Quest for Fire

Set in prehistoric times, Quest for Fire centres on a tribe that has long relied on a single flame kept burning without knowing how to make fire themselves. When that fire is lost, the tribe's survival is at stake, and three warriors are sent out to bring back a new source. Their journey takes them across a harsh landscape of rival groups and dangerous animals, and along the way they meet Ika, a woman whose knowledge of fire-making is what they have been searching for.

Jean-Jacques Annaud directed the film, his first in a filmography that later includes The Name of the Rose, The Bear and The Lover, from a screenplay by Gérard Brach. Everett McGill, Ron Perlman, Nicholas Kadi and Rae Dawn Chong lead a cast of twenty-five credited performers, supported by a crew of 102. The production, involving Canadian, American and French companies, cost about 12 million dollars and returned roughly 55 million worldwide.

Audiences have received the film favourably: it holds a 7.3 rating from over 23,000 votes on IMDb and a 7 out of 10 from around 600 votes on TMDB. A critics' rating of 7.4 from 25 reviews places it in similar territory, suggesting a broadly consistent response across viewers and reviewers. It runs 100 minutes.