To shoot their Oscar-contending film Still Standing, directors Víctor Tadashi Suárez and Livia Albeck-Ripka donned hazmat suits – for good reason.
Their documentary, winner of Oscar-qualifying awards at Full Frame, the Seattle International Film Festival, and Aspen Shortsfest, explores homes left toxic by the catastrophic Eaton fire that tore through the Altadena section of Los Angeles in January 2025. That wildfire destroyed thousands of homes in Altadena alone, but owners of homes that survived – the houses still standing – faced an impossible dilemma: should they risk their health to return home?
“To enter toxic homes, we wore hazmat suits and masks, and covered our car in plastic sheeting,” the directors write. “This is the second time that we have made a film together about wildfires. We met in January 2020, working on a film about the Australian bushfires for The New York Times Presents.”
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Still Standing screened at SFFILM’s Doc Stories in San Francisco this weekend. It screens at the San Diego Asian Film Festival Sunday, at UnionDocs in Queens, New York on Monday, and at Cameraimage in Torún, Poland on Friday, among other festivals this month. The film screened at the Bend Film Festival in Oregon last month, where it won Best Documentary Short. The documentary won Best Cinematography at the Nevada City Film Festival, selected from among all genres in competition.
“After the Los Angeles wildfires, thousands of homes remain standing, yet contaminated with toxic ash. Many insurers tell residents their homes are habitable,” reads a synopsis. Moving back in under such circumstances presents a wrenching choice. “Shot from the inside of toxic homes on 16mm film, Still Standing considers what it means to survive one disaster only to face another.”
Tadashi Suárez and Livia Albeck-Ripka are a filmmaking couple based in LA.
“We live in Los Angeles, about 10 miles from one of the neighborhoods that burned in last year’s wildfires,” they write in their directors’ statement. “In the months that followed, the city began to return to normal, and those who lost homes began rebuilding. But there was another, quieter, and in some ways more horrifying reality unfolding for those whose homes were still standing.”
The directors’ statement continues, “We first learned of this situation through our close friend, Roy Werner, who also composed the score for this film. He, his wife and infant daughter had been unable to return home for months. Their house was the first we filmed in. At that time, there was barely any published reporting about the toxicity of standing homes.
‘Still Standing’
POV/TIME Studios
“Over the next six months, we interviewed more than two dozen residents, researchers, and environmental consultants, and filmed in more than a dozen homes. They were time capsules frozen from the moment before the disaster, with Christmas decorations still up and tables set for family gatherings; like scenes from Pompeii or Chernobyl. Residents were caught in a liminal space where loss and grief are undefined. They spent their days on an endless cycles of phone calls to insurance companies and adjusters.”
Still Standing is executive produced by Kevin Iwashina (former head of documentary at Fifth Season and former president of the IDA board of directors), and three-time Emmy-nominated filmmaker Bernardo Ruiz.
Still Standing premieres online on November 19 as as part of the 9th season of the PBS series POV.
