Burn Ceremony hypnotizes at the 2025 New Jersey International Film Festival

Watching Burn Ceremony feels less like viewing a film and more like being pulled into a trance. It’s definitely not something you watch casually. It demands attention – focus – concentration. Alexander Girav’s experimental short is hypnotic and deliberate, offering no clear narrative but instead crafting an experience rooted in sensation and atmosphere.

The film centers on an unsanctioned nighttime observation of an unknown organization’s largest oil refinery – a massive structure that processes over 400,000 barrels of crude oil a day. But rather than document it in a conventional way, Burn Ceremony engages us kinetically, demanding all of our attention. From a distance, we watch as the refinery pulses alive into the…