Infrastructures of Ash: Reproductive Burnout in Mikel Gurrea's Suro (2022)

ABSTRACT: Mikel Gurrea's 2022 film Suro imagines the enclosure of care as a family swimming pool. At the story's close, the wildfire that threatens a family's home evidences the convergence between inequitable distributions of care, burnout, and eco-catastrophe. These flames are kindled by the exhaustion brought on by the extraordinarily uneven burdens of meeting the needs of living. In its examination of reproduction's antagonisms, the film surfaces the idea of a gestational water infrastructure, one that combats forest fires via the collectivization of reproduction. Reading Suro in dialogue with recent work on the politics of exhaustion and feminist thought, this article considers exhaustion's potential for fueling a politics of care's redistribution.